Effect of hydrogen addition on the residual stress of B–C–N films with cubic boron nitride phase prepared by r.f. magnetron sputtering of a B4C target

Self-Ordered Orientation of Crystalline Hexagonal Boron Nitride Nanodomains Embedded in Boron Carbonitride Films for Band Gap Engineering

“…This is usually correlated to the fact that elemental and/or binary phase segregation would occur instead of forming a uniform BCN network [16,31,32]. During the growth process, B, C, and N atoms prefer to combine differently as a result of their chemical properties, for example, B and C can exist both as elements and as part of compounds, while N could exist in the films only as compound [27,[33][34][35]. Indeed, taking the advantage of the immiscibility between BN and graphite [23,36], the layer by layer composite structure of h-BN and graphene, planar BCN nanosheets consisting of h-BN domains, and h-BN nanosheets containing graphene quantum dots have been synthesized successfully, and have demonstrated the superior capability of manipulating their band gap [17,[37][38][39].…”

Thick c-BN films deposited by radio frequency magnetron sputtering in argon/nitrogen gas mixture with additional hydrogen gas

“…[34][35][36] The involvement of hydrogen is believed to inhibit the penetration of Ar into the space of (0002) h-BN planes, which is considered to be one of the major reasons for the existence of compressive stress in the magnetron sputtering procedure. [37] Here, we will report on the deposition of high-quality c-BN thick films on Si substrates without any gradient layers by using the RF magnetron sputter method through adding hydrogen gas into reactive gases. In the deposition process, a negative bias voltage is usually utilized to enforce the ion bombardment needed for nucleation of the cubic phase.…”

Preparation and characterization of thick cubic boron nitride films

“…One of the great hurdles, which restricts its practical usage, is the high compressive stress and the poor adhesion to most of the substrates. [7,8] For a long period, it has been difficult to prepare thick c-BN films with high quality. The conventional physical vapor deposition (PVD) technique can produce only a few hundred-nanometer thick films.…”

“…During the past decades, a couple of techniques have been proposed in order to reduce the high stress and improve the adhesion between the c-BN film and the substrates. These techniques include the high temperature deposition, [9] two-stage deposition process, [10] and the addition of a third element such as a small amount of oxygen, [11] hydrogen, [7] and silicon. [10] Besides, various gradient interlayers have been used to improve the film-substrate adhesion.…”

“…These interlayers include a hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) buffer layer, [12] a BN x gradient layer, [13] the ternary B-C-N buffer layers, etc. [7,14] Fan et al [10] have made a comparison among several stress relief methods for c-BN films deposited by the ion beam assisted deposition technique. It is shown that the combination of the addition of Si with the two-stage deposition process is more favorable for not only reducing the stress but also improving the c-BN crystallinity.…”