Ion-beam assisted pulsed laser deposition of textured transition-metal nitride films

Abstract

AbstractIon-beam assisted deposition (IBAD) offers the possibility to prepare thin textured films on amorphous or non-textured substrates. It was shown within the last decade that the ion beam influences the nucleation in material with a rocksalt structure leading to a strong cube texture already within the first 10 nanometres. Among these materials, transition metal nitrides exhibit interesting physical properties as superconductivity, metallic behaviour or superior hardness. Therefore, a reactive IBAD process was applied for the preparation of highly textured transition metal nitride layers using pulsed laser deposition of pure metals in combination with a nitrogen-containing ion beam. The results on the in-plane textured growth of TiN are promising for the development of conducting buffer layer architectures for YBCO coated conductors based on the IBAD approach. Furthermore, this approach was used to prepare other highly textured transition metal nitride thin films like NbN and ZrN.