Manufacture and microstructure of refractory metal nitride films by magnetrom sputtering technique

抄録

Refractory metal nitride, RMN, coatings possessed excellent characteristics and were employed in a wide range of applications, including aerospace, electronics, thermal management, protective layers, ...etc. The fabrication methods for the RMN films were mostly magnetron sputtering techniques with controls on source gases, power modulation, facility geometry, thermal process,... and so forth. This study focused on the TaN and MoN based RMN coatings produced by magnetron sputtering with various input power modulation, including radio frequency, and high intensity plasma impulsed magnetron sputtering, i.e. RFMS and HiPIMS, respectively. The microstructure evolution from amorphous, nanocrystalline, equiaxial-grain, columnar features, in terms of the form of input power and the level of power density. In general, an amorphous/nanocrystalline microstructure feature could be deduced under a low RF power, while a higher level of RF power enhanced the crystallization of RMN layers. In contrast, the use of the HiPIMS power resulted a columnar multiphase RMN film due to higher pulse energy for the coexistance of nitride phases. Recent findings on microstructure evolution and characteristics of the RMN coatings will be intensively discussed.