Studies on Mechanical and Optical Characteristics of TiN Films Deposited on Al, Ti Buffer Layers

Abstract

The TiN ceramic films were deposited on Si (100) substrates with Al and Ti buffer layers by direct current reactive magnetron sputtering in the mixture gas atmosphere of argon and nitrogen. X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, scanning electronic microscope (SEM), nanohardness test and ultra violet-visible-near infrared (UV-VIS-NIR) spectrophotometer were employed to analyze the structure, mechanics and optical characteristics of the TiN films respectively. Analyses of XRD and Raman showed that all the TiN films deposited on Al and Ti buffer layers with TiN (111)-preferred orientations had polycrystalline structures, and the TiN film deposited on Ti buffer layer had a better crystallinity, smaller surface roughness, higher hardness and larger elastic modulus than those of the TiN film deposited on Al buffer layer. Moreover, the reflectivity of the Ti/TiN film became higher than Al/TiN film above λ=645 nm. At λ=1200 nm, the Ti/TiN film showed the maximum reflectivity of 81.8%. These conclusions also showed that the metal multilayer TiN films have important application and research prospect in terms of solar control coatings or resistance to high temperature in building coating material.