Reactive magnetron cosputtering of hard and conductive ternary nitride thin films: Ti-Zr-N and Ti-Ta-N Properties of reactively radio frequency-magnetron sputtered ( Zr , Sn ) TiO 4 dielectric films Copper nitride ͑Cu 3 N͒ thin films were deposited on glass substrates by reactive radio-frequency magnetron sputtering of a pure copper target in a nitrogen/argon atmosphere. The deposition rate of the films gradually decreased with increasing nitrogen flow rate. The color of the deposited films was a reddish dark brown. The Cu 3 N films obtained by this method were strongly textured with crystal direction ͓100͔. The grain size of the polycrystalline films ranged from 16 to 26 nm. The Hall effect of the copper nitride ͑Cu 3 N͒ thin films was investigated. The optical energy gap of the films was obtained from the Hall coefficient and found to vary with the nitrogen content. The surface morphology was studied by scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. The copper nitride thin films are unstable and decompose into nitrogen and copper upon heat treatment when annealed in vacuum with argon protected at 200°C for 1 h.

This article reports the synthesis of ZrN∕W2N multilayered coatings with nanoscale bilayer period using rf magnetron sputtering. X-ray diffraction, Auger electron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscope, nanoindenter, and profiler were employed to investigate the influence of working pressure on microstructural and mechanical properties of the coatings. Well-defined composition modulation and layer structure of the multilayered coating are indicated directly. A mixed polycrystalline of ZrN(111), W2N(111), W2N(200) and W2N(311) textures appeared in the multilayered structures. All multilayered coatings revealed higher nanohardness, elastic modulus, critical load, and lower residual stress than the rule-of-mixture value of monolithic ZrN and W2N coatings, especially for one prepared at 0.8Pa working pressure.