Secondary electron emission characteristics of TiN coatings produced by RF magnetron sputtering.

Multipactor, a frequent detrimental effect in space high power systems, can degrade the performance of space microwave components or even cause devastation. Surface coatings with a low secondary electron yield (SEY) have been verified to mitigate multipactor efficiently, and some literature indicates that titanium nitride (TiN) coating is an excellent multipactor suppressor due to its recognized low SEY, whereas so far, the theoretical analysis for interpreting secondary electron emission (SEE) characteristics of TiN coatings is scarce. In this work, we experimentally and theoretically investigate the SEE characteristics of TiN coatings. We fabricate seven TiN coatings at different N₂ concentrations by RF sputtering. The microscopic analysis indicates that the nanostructured TiN coatings are more likely to be formed at low N₂ concentration, inversely, the compact TiN films are more likely to be formed at high N₂ concentration. The SEE measurement shows that the nanostructured TiN coatings are more efficient to trap electrons than the compact TiN films do. Furthermore, via measuring resistivity, we find a novel regularity that the variation in true SEY largely depends on the resistivity for compact TiN films. Namely, the true SEY of compact TiN films linearly decreases as their resistivity exponentially declines. Then, we establish an equation to describe the true SEY as a function of resistivity via applying the semiconductor conductivity theory to Dionne's SEE model. The equation qualitatively interprets the experimental regularity. This work presents a probability to control the SEE level of TiN coatings by adjusting resistivity and is of significance to comprehend the SEE of semiconductors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]