Nitrogen incorporation and loss during ion nitriding of Al

Abstract

Ion nitriding of Al has been performed by a nitrogen reactive ion beam using a hot filament ion source. The N incorporation and loss has been determined at a beam energy of 1.6 keV with two ion current densities of 0.1 and 0.2 mA/cm 2, and a substrate temperature of 350 °C. For this purpose, the ion beam has been characterised by an energy selective mass spectrometer, showing solely of N 2 + and N + ions with a composition of about 80% and 20%, respectively. The ion energy distributions of both N 2 + and N + consist of a single narrow peak with a full width at half maximum of about 10 eV. From the beam parameters, N loss due to sputtering and backscattering has been calculated using dynamic binary collision computer simulations. After an initial transient, the stationary partial sputtering yield of N is predicted to be 0.43, while the amount of backscattered N is about 4% of the incident N fluence. The total amount of incorporated N measured by nuclear reaction analysis (NRA) is consistent with the incident N fluence and the N loss obtained from the simulation.