Abstract
TiB 2 thin films (∼100 nm thick) were deposited on c-Si (1 0 0) wafers employing the d.c. unbalanced magnetron sputtering (UMS) technique. The influence of negative substrate bias V b on the mechanical properties of TiB 2 films was studied. Structural and morphological results were obtained by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray reflectivity (XRR) analysis whereas the mechanical properties were measured by means of depth sensing nanoindentation (NI). A detailed study of the influence of substrate mechanical properties on the measured elastic modulus ( E) and hardness ( H) was carried out using one sharp (BRK50) and one ultra sharp (BRK20) Berkovich type diamond tips with tip roundness 50 and 20 nm respectively. Bhattacharya–Nix (1988) [15] modified model was applied to assess thin film's intrinsic mechanical properties. Structural, morphological and mechanical testing results showed an improvement of mechanical properties of TiB 2 thin films with the increase of the applied substrate bias voltage. Additionally they implied that BRK20 experimental results were less affected by substrate's mechanical properties.
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