Texture of the nano-crystalline AlN thin films and the growth conditions in DC magnetron sputtering

DC reactive magnetron sputtering technique has been used for the preparation of Al N thin fi lms. The deposition temperature and the fl ow ratio of N2/Ar were varied and subsequent dependency of the fi lms crystallites orientation/texture has been addressed. In general, deposited fi lms were found hexagonal polycrystalline with a(002) preferred orientation. The X-ray diffraction(XRD) data revealed that the fi lm crystallinity improves,with the increase of substrate temperature from 300 ℃to 500℃. The dropped in full width half maximum(FWHM) of the XRD rocking curve value further con fi rmed it. However, increasing substrate temperature above 500 ℃or reducing the nitrogen condition(from 60 to 30% in the environment) induced the growth of crystallites with(102) and(103) orientations. The rise of rocking curve FWHM for the corresponding conditions depicted that the fi lms texture quality deteriorated. A further con fi rmation of the variation in fi lm texture/orentation with the growth conditions has been obtained from the variation in FWHM values of a dominant E1(TO) mode in the Fourier transform infrared(FTIR) spectra and the E2(high) mode in Raman spectra. We have correlated the columnar structure in AFM surface analyses with the(002) or c-axis orientation as well. Spectroscopic ellipsometry of the samples have shown a higher refractive index at 500 ℃growth temperature.