NbC thin films via reactive DC sputtering in a CH4/Ar atmosphere

Abstract

We have demonstrated the growth of NbC-Amorphous C films that manifest a well-known nanocomposite structure (Klages and Memming, 1990; Nedfors et al., 2011; Sala et al., 2021). The films were deposited using reactive DC sputtering in a CH4/Ar atmosphere using an insulating substrate near room temperature. A metallic Nb sputtering target was sputtered in an argon/CH4 atmosphere with a pressure range of 5.9 to 8.5 mTorr as the CH4 flow was also varied. Crystalline NbC films were deposited at room temperature at the lowest CH4 flow rate. The films exhibited ohmic electrical response at room temperature. The DC electrical resistivity scaled almost 4 orders of magnitude from 4.39 × 10−4 Ω-cm to 1.08 × 10−1 Ω-cm through changes in CH4 flow rates and the resultant C content of the films. The large variation in resistivity cannot be attributed to the changes in sample composition, e.g. volumetric mixing. It is postulated from XRD and TEM results that the large change in resistivity is due to the decreasing NbC crystallite size with increasing CH4. This leads to additional three-dimensional nanoscale intragranular interfaces and results in increased resistivity. X-ray reflectivity measurements were conducted, and the modelled film density was found to match the expected density for the film compositions as measured using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Elastic recoil detection analysis (ERDA) was used to quantify H content of the films. The H content increased from 5.5 to 22 atomic percent with corresponding increase in CH4 flow. Transmission electron microscopy utilizing precession electron diffraction (PED) was conducted and showed a strong dependence of crystallinity on CH4 flow. A multilayer layer sample with varying CH4 flowrates was examined with TEM and showed that films were amorphous in nature for flow rates above 10 SCCM CH4; in agreement with XRD results.