Structural and physical characteristics of sputter deposited zirconium nitride thin films by sputtering at various time in Ar-N2 atmosphere

Abstract

Zirconium nitride films were deposited by RF reactive magnetron sputtering at room temperature in an N2 and Ar ambient. The X-ray diffraction analysis indicated that the growth of ZrN with preferred orientations (111) and (200) on the soda-lame glass substrates was reached. The particle size formed on the surface of the synthesized layers increases from 15.9 to 42.1 nm as deposition time increases. The N/Zr ratio decreases from 2.0 to 1.43 with increasing deposition time from 10 to 30, and the average surface roughness increased from 0.88 to 5.58 nm. Increasing the deposition time reduced the bandgap from 2.91 to 2.06 eV and also increased the resistance from 19.84 × 10–6 to 40.69 × 10−6Ω cm. The thermal coefficient of resistance was 9.27 × 10–8 $$\frac{{\Omega \cdot {\text{cm}}}}{{^{ \circ } K}}$$ for the thickest sample and 5.26 × 10–8 $$\frac{{\Omega \cdot {\text{cm}}}}{{^{ \circ } K}}$$ for the thinnest sample. At a wavelength of 600 nm, the refractive index was 2.028 and 0.889 for the samples deposited for 10 and 30 min, respectively.