Reactive Gas Feeding Technique in Deposition of Titanium Nitride Film by Magnetron Sputtering

The paper discusses the effect of the reactive gas feeding parameters in a magnetron sputtering unit on the microstructural development of Titanium Nitride thin film. In this work, TiN films were deposited using DC reactive magnetron sputtering at substrate temperatures of 400 degrees C, 200 degrees C and at room temperature. The film fabrication employed four feeding configurations for the N-2 reactive gas. The nitrogen gas was fed through a distribution ring positioned above the Ti target into the plasma flux at 4 different distances from the target resulting in different gas distribution patterns and also different levels of gas warming prior to it entering the sputtering chamber. The effect of the plasma warming of the reactive gas caused the sputtering reaction, and hence the phase formation of the TiN, to alter. XRD and SEM were utilized in the microstructural study of the TiN films. It was found that for type D N-2 feeding configuration, where N-2 enters the deposition chamber at the middle of chamber, the lattice parameter of TiN film is not affected by the substrate temperature ranging from RT to 400 degrees C. In practice, this means that altering the gas feeding technique can help to reduce the variation in the film structure caused by an uneven distribution in the substrate temperature.