Minimisation of intrinsic stress in titanium nitride using a cathodic arc with plasma immersion ion implantation

An important issue in thin film coatings is the intrinsic stress in the coatings. The quality of the film can strongly be affected by stress as it may cause films to delaminate from the substrate. Because of this it is important to investigate ways of controlling the build-up of the intrinsic stress in growing films. The approach reported in this work is to combine the plasma immersion ion implantation technique with conventional physical vapour deposition. We have used such a combined system to produce a series of titanium nitride films on silicon. The aim was to observe the stress of the film as a function of the applied substrate voltage and frequency of the PIII pulse. Our results indicate that the stress in the film is related to the voltage-frequency product (V.f), and that an optimum value of V.f can be found to produce high quality films of TiN without excessive build-up of stress.