Detailed study of reactively sputtered ScN thin films at room temperature
Materialia(2022)
摘要
To contemplate an alternative approach for the minimization of diffusion at high temperature, present findings impart viability of room-temperature deposited reactively sputtered ScN thin films. The adopted route endows precise control over the RN2 flow for a methodical structural phase evolution from Sc→ScN and probe the correlated physical aspects of the highly textured ScN samples. In the nitrided regime i.e. at RN2 = 2.5–100% flow, incorporation of unintentional oxygen defects was evidenced from surface sensitive soft x-ray absorption spectroscopy study, though less compared to their metal (RN2 = 0%) and interstitial (RN2 = 1.6%) counterparts, due to higher Gibbs free energy for Sc-O-N formation with no trace of ligand field splitting around the O K-edge spectra. To eradicate the skepticism of appearance of N K-edge (401.6 eV) and Sc L-edge (402.2 eV) absorption spectra adjacent to each other, the first-ever Sc K-edge study has been adopted to validate complementary insight on the metrical parameters of the Sc-N system. Optical bandgaps of the polycrystalline ScN thin film samples were found to vary between 2.25 and 2.62 eV as obtained from the UV–vis spectroscopy, whereas, the nano-indentation hardness and modulus of the as-deposited samples lie between 15–34 GPa and 152–476 GPa, respectively following a linearly increasing trend of resistance to plastic deformations with an exception at 34 GPa in case of RN2 = 5% sample. Besides, contrary to other early 3d transition metal nitrides (TiN, VN, CrN), a comprehensive comparison of noticeably large homogeneity range in Sc-N has been outlined to apprehend the minuscule lattice expansion over the large RN2 realm.
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关键词
Scadium nitride,Soft x-ray absorption spectroscopy,X-ray absorption fine structure,Uv visible spectroscopy,Nanoindentation
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