Structural and mechanical study of thermally annealed tungsten nitride thin films

Role of sputter powers and deposition temperatures towards the growth of nc‐W2N/a‐Si3N4 nanocomposite coating

“…A DC power supply was applied to sputter W target, and a RF power supply was applied to sputter the Si target. Before deposition, Si substrates were cleaned to remove contaminants from the substrate surface using the standard method, as reported in our previous publication 10,16 . Other deposition parameters are given in Table 1.…”

“…The W and Si targets were pre‐sputtered for 10 min at 10 W DC and 8 W RF power respectively to remove impurities present on the target surface with closed shutter. The depositions were performed with previously optimized flow rates of argon and nitrogen gas ratio as Ar : N 2 = 20:5 sccm, More details about the system, the process can be found in our previous work 10‐12,16 . The following two series were deposited to analyze the role of Si 3 N 4 content and substrate temperature (Table 2).…”

“…Although a large number of reports are available related to W 2 N coating only, very limited studies on W 2 N‐based nanocomposite coatings are available in the literature. In our previous work, we had presented preliminary studies on the mechanical property of nc‐W 2 N/a‐Si 3 N 4 nanocomposite film and showed the significance of deposition time 10‐12 . It is observed that the mechanical property varies with increasing thickness/deposition time.…”

“…We have also shown improvement in the mechanical properties of W 2 N/SiN nanocomposite coating when annealed under vacuum at a higher temperature. A hardness value of ~39 GPa was observed when vacuum annealing was performed at 700°C 10 and beyond that its phase dissociated. Apart from our work, mostly other reports are related to binary W 2 N or ternary compounds eg, CrWN, MoWN, etc., in which W was used in a very low percentage ≤10%.…”

Influence of post-annealing on structural, optical and electrical properties of tin nitride thin films prepared by atomic layer deposition

“…Numerous studies have been performed on ALD grown nitrides (such as MoN x , WN x , TaN x , HfN x , etc. ), where the phase change (from amorphous to crystalline) and the decomposition of the nitride film to metal were observed after annealing [36][37][38][39][40][41]. For example, the amorphous δ-MoN films deposited by sputtering at room temperature, crystallized after annealing in vacuum at temperatures above 600 °C [36].…”