Control of bombardment energy and energetic species toward a superdense titanium nitride film

Abstract

Plasma induced microstructural, compositional, and resistivity changes in ultrathin chemical vapor deposited titanium nitride films TiN deposited by dc magnetron sputtering has been widely used as a hard mask material for dielectric patterning in multilevel Cu interconnects. Typically inside a "poison-mode" regime, the film density is 4.5-4.9 g / cm 3 . The microstructure, varying from columnar structure to nanocrystalline, is controlled by both thermodynamics and surface kinetics through ionization, substrate bias, target voltage, etc. A relatively low density film can be correlated with a porous columnar structure, low mechanical robustness, and weak resistance to plasma etching. However, with controlled growth, an applied substrate bias does not create resputtering and crystal defects. Instead, the authors create film with a maximum density of 5.3 g / cm 3 . In this high density film, carrier scatterings through grain boundary are greatly suppressed and the film resistivity is as low as 95 ⍀ cm, which brings additional benefits as a conductive capping layer. As it is deposited at room temperature, the process minimizes the thermal budget to the underlying low-k dielectric materials to be patterned.

Study on reactive sputtering of yttrium oxide: Process and thin film properties

“…The films show clear columnar structure at metallic mode, however, inside the poisoned-mode regime, the column structure disappears. This microstructure transformation can have different causes typically for DC magnetron sputtering [44], which needs further investigation.…”

Corrosion resistance and biocompatibility of carbon-ion-implanted AZ31B magnesium alloy

“…The corrosion rate is determined by the corrosion current density, Generally, the lower the corrosion current density, the lower the corrosion rate [43,44]. Compared with the untreated AZ31b sample (I corr = 7.224 × 10 -5 A/cm 2 ), the samples implanted at doses of 1 × 10 18 , 1.5 × 10 18 , and 2 × 10 18 ions/cm 2 exhibit dramatically lower I corr values of 9.822 × 10 −7 3.138 × 10 −7 , and 2.432 × 10 −7 A/cm 2 , respectively.…”

Improvement on corrosion resistance and biocompability of ZK60 magnesium alloy by carboxyl ion implantation

“…The I corr of untreated sample displays nearly 9 times higher than the treated sample with 5 × 10 16 ions/cm 2 , 6 times larger than the sample with 1 × 10 16 ions/cm 2 . Generally, more negative corrosion current density corresponds to lower corrosion rate [9,52]. The results of potentiody- namic polarization reveal that the samples have better anticorrosion performance after COOH + ions implantation.…”