Influence of Ar–N2 gas composition on the magnetron-sputter deposition of cubic boron nitride films

✍ Scribed by Sven Ulrich; Jian Ye; Michael Stüber

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 244 KB
• Volume: 205
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0257-8972
• DOI: 10.1016/j.surfcoat.2010.05.032

✦ Synopsis

Thin films of cubic boron nitride (c-BN) can be produced by various PVD and PECVD techniques under several prerequisites referring reportedly to the growth temperature, stoichiometry of the deposited films, and energy impact of the growing surface during film deposition. For reactive magnetron-sputtering in Ar/N 2 gas mixtures and using a hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) target, we examined the values of substrate bias necessitated for the deposition of c-BN in correlation with the composition of sputter gas at a fixed radiofrequency (r.f.) target power of 500 W and a substrate temperature of 400 °C. The threshold substrate bias was found to minimize at the [N 2 ]:[Ar] ratio of about 1:16. At low nitrogen concentrations i.e. [N 2 ]:[Ar] b 1:32, c-BN growth was not achieved. The results are correlated with the variation of plasma parameters for different [N 2 ]:[Ar] gas concentration ratios as evaluated from Langmuir double-probe measurements. Influence from the film stoichiometry is also shortly commented.