Shozo Inoue1, Hitoshi Uchida1, Takaaki Ohba1, Keiji Koterazawa1,Akiyoshi Chayahara2 and Mititaka Terasawa3
1Department of Mechanical and Intelligent Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Himeji Institute of Technology, Hyogo 671-22
The process of rf reactive magnetron sputtering is suitable for depositing TiN films, because of its applicability for large-area processing. This process, however, shows the so-called hysteresis when the reactive gas is controlled by constant flow rate, which leads to a relatively poor reproducibility.
In this paper, it is shown that the closed-loop nitrogen flow control by plasma emission monitoring (PEM) provides a stable reactive sputtering under a wide range of nitrogen partial pressure. The influence of the nitrogen partial pressure on the Ti-N film composition, crystallographic structure and resistivity was also investigated. The Ti-N films deposited at the nitrogen partial pressure of 2{~}5{×}10-3 Pa revealed the minimum resistivity and appeared to be stoichiometric TiN. The PEM control system makes it possible to stably control this range of nitrogen partial pressure. This system also provides high rate film processing.
(Received March 13, 1997)
titanium nitride, optical emission, reactive sputtering, dynamic control, resistivity, composition
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