Articles you may be interested inStructural and electrical characteristics of high quality (100) orientated-Zn 3 N 2 thin films grown by radiofrequency magnetron sputtering Epitaxial Ti 1-x W x N alloys grown on MgO(001) by ultrahigh vacuum reactive magnetron sputtering: Electronic properties and long-range cation orderingThe crystal structure, chemical bonding state, composition, and electrical resistivity of W-N films deposited by reactive rf sputtering are investigated by x-ray diffraction, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Auger electron spectroscopy, Rutherford backscattering spectrometry, and four-point probe. Using 150 W of sputtering power and 25% of N 2 partial flow rate, the deposition rate and resistivity of W-N films decrease with increasing negative substrate bias. When the substrate bias is set at Ϫ100 V, resistivity of W-N films increases while the deposition rate decreases with increasing N 2 partial flow rate. WϩW 2 N mix phase, W 2 N phase, and W 2 NϩWN mix phase are obtained at 10%, 15%-25%, and 40% of N 2 partial flow rate, respectively. When the N 2 partial flow rate is greater than 40%, the films become amorphous like. Nitrogen concentration in the W-N films increases continuously with increasing N 2 partial flow rate, and the W 4 f core-level electrons change gradually from metallic W bondings to WN bondings. By reducing the sputtering power to 50 W, we have found that film resistivity also rises with increasing N 2 partial flow rate but crystalline W 2 N phase can be obtained with 10%-50% of N 2 partial flow rate. The connection between the process conditions, structural change and electrical resistivity of the sputtered W-N thin films is discussed.