Si barrier metal grown by hybrid radical beam pulsed laser deposition of TiN

Titanium nitride (TiN) thin films are of great use for electronic and mechanical industry due to their excellent properties of good electric conductivity and diffusion barrier. Especially, they are expected to be used as a diffusion barrier metal in Si VLSI. The pulsed laser deposition (PLD) using an excimer laser is very attractive for growth of TiN thin films as well as other nitride films. The most simple way for TiN growth by PLD is use of TiN target. However, the TiN film grown by conventional PLD using the TiN target becomes Ti-rich. In addition, high purity TiN target can not be commercially available (typically 99.5%). To overcome these problems, we report growth of high quality TiN thin film epitaxially grown on Si(100) substrate by hybrid nitrogen radical beam PLD using a high purity titanium (99.99%) metal target and nitrogen radical beam gun.