Heteroepitaxial growth of TiN film on MgO (100) by reactive magnetron sputtering

TiN thin films were deposited on MgO (100) substrates at different substrate temperatures using rf sputtering with Ar/N(2) ratio of about 10. At 700°C, the growth rate of TiN was approximately 0.05 μm/h. The structural and electrical properties of TiN thin films were characterized with x-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and Hall measurements. For all deposition conditions, XRD results show that the TiN films can be in an epitaxy with MgO with cube-on-cube orientation relationship of (001)(TiN) // (001)(MgO) and [100](TiN) // [100](MgO). TEM with selected-area electron diffraction pattern verifies the epitaxial growth of the TiN films on MgO. SEM and AFM show that the surface of the TiN film is very smooth with roughness approximately 0.26 nm. The minimum resistivity of the films can be as low as 45 μΩ cm.