IUVSTA 15th International Vacuum Congress (IVC-15), AVS 48th International Symposium (AVS-48), 11th International Conference on Solid Surfaces (ICSS-11)
    Surface Engineering Monday Sessions
       Session SE-MoA

Paper SE-MoA4
Characterization of Ternary Nitride Films using Spectroscopic Ellipsometry

Monday, October 29, 2001, 3:00 pm, Room 132

Session: Surface Engineering I: Graded, Multicomponent, and Complex Coatings
Presenter: S.M. Aouadi, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Authors: S.M. Aouadi, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
T.Z. Gorishnyy, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
F. Namavar, Spire Corporation
N. Finnegan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
S.L. Rohde, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Correspondent: Click to Email
This paper reports on the first attempt to quantitatively analyze the chemical and phase composition of ternary nitride nanocrystalline films using spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE). Coatings of CrBN, TiBN, TiZrN, and TiCrN were deposited at low temperatures (<200 °C) on silicon substrates using ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD) and/or unbalanced magnetron sputtering. These coatings were developed for the protective and decorative coating industries, which require very precise compositions to obtain the desired mechanical properties and/or color. The deposited films were characterized post-deposition using x-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES), Rutherford Backscattering (RBS), infrared spectroscopic ellipsometry (IR-SE), and visible-light spectroscopic ellipsometry (VIS-SE). The primary phases in the films were identified using XRD. The chemical composition and phase composition of the samples were determined from XPS, AES, and RBS measurements, as appropriate. VIS-SE and IR-SE data were analyzed using two different approaches to obtain the chemical and phase composition of these samples. The first approach relies on the identification of the optical constants for a few samples of known compositions (from RBS, AES or XPS data) and the use of these optical "standards" in the interpolation of the optical constants of unknown materials to deduce the corresponding chemical composition. The second approach is based on the effective medium approximation, which requires the knowledge of the optical constants of each of the constituent phases. The chemical compositions obtained by SE using both the above approaches were compared to the results obtained from traditional chemical analysis techniques (RBS, XPS, and AES).