Microstructural and Mechanical Properties of TiAlN and Ti3AlN Films Deposited by Reactive Magnetron Sputtering

Abstract

Two series of TiAlN and Ti3AlN films have been deposited on Si (100) substrates by reactive magnetron sputtering TiAl and Ti3Al targets in Ar/N2 mixture. The effects of incoming ions energies controlled by Vb on the microstructure, morphologies, residual stress and hardness have been explored by XRD, SEM, AFM, surface profiler and nanoindentation. The results showed that single phase cubic Ti-Al-N solid solubility formed by Al atoms replacing some Ti atoms in the cubic TiN lattice occured in both TiAlN and Ti3AlN films. As substrate bias increased, the preferred orientation firstly changed from (111) to (200), and then returned to (111) at higher substrate bias. At the same time, high substrate bias promoted the densification of films and presence of high compressive stress, which is benefit for improvement of hardness.