Parallel epitaxy of TiN(100) thin films on Si(100) produced by pulsed reactive crossed-beam laser ablation

Abstract

TiN(001)[100]‖Si(001)[100] parallel epitaxy of thin films grown by pulsed reactive crossed-beam laser ablation (KrF, 248 nm) is investigated in situ by reflection high-energy electron diffraction and ex situ by x-ray diffraction, full-hemispherical X-ray photoelectron diffraction and low-energy electron diffraction. TiN films are grown on atomically flat, initially two domain 2×1 reconstructed Si(001) surfaces at 100⩽T⩽800° C. Parallel epitaxy is found to prevail at T⩾400 °C with growth rates in the 10−2 monolayer/pulse−1 range and a repetition rate of 2 Hz. The substrate and film morphologies are investigated using atomic force microscopy.