Ion beam assisted deposition of TiN thin film on Si (100)

The ion-beam-assisted deposition (IBAD) method was used to deposit TiN film on Si (100) substrate. The IBAD system consists of an e-beam evaporation source for evaporating Ti metal and a 3 cm-diameter Kaufman ion source for providing nitrogen ion beam to form TiN on Si substrate. The ion energy (1000, 500, and 300 V), ion beam incident angle (normal, and 45°) and substrate temperature (25 °C and 300 °C) were chosen as the processing variables. The ion/atom ratio was kept at 0.89. After deposition, the thin film was characterized by X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (XTEM). Resistivity was measured to study the effect of processing parameters on the electric property. The results showed that the preferred orientation of TiN varies with ion beam incident angle and deposition temperature. At the 45° incident ion beam, the (111) orientation is more likely to occur as compared with films prepared at the normal incident beam direction. As the temperature increases, (200) becomes dominant due to thermodynamic factor consideration. The ion-induced defects may be the major factor affecting the resistivity of TiN. Resistivity decreases as the deposition temperature increases or as the ion incident angle changes from normal direction to 45° angle.