Heteroepitaxial growth and microwave plasma annealing of DC reactive sputtering deposited TiZrN film on Si (100)

Epitaxial TiZrN films were successfully grown on Si (100) substrates at high temperature by using DC magnetron reactive sputtering with a Ti0.68Zr0.32 alloy target. Annealing of a grown TiZrN/Si specimen was performed by applying microwave plasma with a gas mixture of N-2 and H-2 to improve the film quality. The X-ray rocking curve (XRC) width of (200)(TiZrN) reflection can reach a minimum value of 1.18 degrees. The heteroepitaxial relationship of TiZrN with Si is {001}(TiZrN)//{001}(Si) and < 110 >(TiZrN)//< 110 >(Si). The (200)(TiZrN) XRC width of a 20 nm-thick TiZrN film reduces from 1.99 degrees to 0.85 degrees by microwave plasma annealing. As a result of the improvement of the film quality, the annealed film exhibits a much lower resistivity (28 mu Omega.cm) than that of the as-deposited one (44 mu Omega.cm). The surface morphologies of the TiZrN films are smooth with the surface roughness in the range of 1-2 nm.