Structural and morphological properties of TiN deposited by magnetron sputtering

Abstract

This work studied the simultaneous effect of multiple parameters on the microstructure and topography of TiN thin films deposited by reactive unbalanced DC magnetron sputtering. The simultaneous influence of deposition parameters including pressure, temperature, and power on crystallite size, texture coefficient, microstructure, and roughness parameters was investigated using design of experiments (DoE): the Taguchi method. The results showed that the mean crystallite size of (111) and (200) planes increase when the temperature and cathode power increase. Furthermore, the increase of cathode power from 50 to 150 W augments the mean of root mean square height (Sq) from 2 to 10 nm. However, the substrate temperature has no considerable effect on the roughness parameters of the surface. Cathode power has also a prominent influence on the skewness of deposited layers in which it abruptly decreases when the power changes from 100 W to 150 W. In other words, all samples deposited at 150 W have negative skewness. It was also shown that the deposition rate is mainly controlled by the cathode power.