1. Effect of intrinsic stress on preferred orientation in AlN thin films.
- Author
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Gan, B. K., Bilek, M. M. M., McKenzie, D. R., Taylor, M. B., and McCulloch, D. G.
- Subjects
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ALUMINUM nitride , *ELECTRON spectroscopy , *X-ray diffraction , *CRYSTALLOGRAPHY , *IONS - Abstract
We examine the effect of ion impact energy on the intrinsic stress and microstructure of aluminum nitride thin films deposited using a filtered cathodic arc. The dependence of intrinsic stress on ion impact energy is studied over the range from 0 to 350 V using dc bias and up to several kV for a fraction of the ions using pulse bias. For dc bias, the stress reaches a maximum at 200 V and decreases with further increase in ion bias. The preferred orientation of the crystallites was studied by cross-section transmission electron microscopy and diffraction. We found that there is a preference for the c crystallographic axis to lie in the plane of the film under high intrinsic stress conditions (4 GPa), whereas a c-axis orientation perpendicular to the plane of the film was observed for low intrinsic stress (0.25 GPa). We carried out calculations of the expected distribution of intensity in cross-sectional electron diffraction patterns to predict the effect of rotation freedom of crystallites with the c axis pinned. The calculated patterns agreed well with experiment. © 2004 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2004
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