“…Instead of the high-pressure-high-temperature methods adopted in Refs. [13,17], cubic tantalum mononitride with the NaCl-structure can be obtained from the initial elements using the method of self-spreading high-temperature synthesis [18], by nitriding of tantalum in glow discharge [19], by heating hexagonal TaN in a nitrogen-argon plasma jet [20]. The method of ultrahigh vacuum reactive magnetron sputter deposition has been employed comparatively recently for growth of thick cubic TaN x films on MgO(0 0 1) [15,21] and Si(0 0 1) [22,23] wafers.…”