Deposition of high quality TiN thin films with nano-structure

Nano-structure TiN thin films with excellent properties were deposited on the silicon wafer and stainless steel substrate under room temperature by a filtered cathode arc plasma technique. The structure and morphology of the films were characterized by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and small angle X-ray diffractometer (XRD), and it's hardness and elastic mouldness were measured by nano-indenter. Research results show that the TiN thin films are highly uniform, very smooth, dense and droplet-phase-free. The average grain size of the films is 50 nm, and it's hardness is up to 50 GPa that is about two times of that deposited by conventional CVD and PVD techniques. XRD analysis demonstrates that the diffraction peaks of the TiN films move to small angle, and the films display a preferred orientation along plane (111).