Abstract
The purpose of this study is to research the oxidation behavior for different composition TiZrN thin film at high temperature in vacuum. A series of TiZrN film were deposited on Si (001) substrates using unbalanced magnetron sputtering. Specimens were later annealed respectively at different temperature ranging from 700°C to 1000°C in vacuum. In order to research effect of composition of TiZrN thin film, this study used content of Zr/(Zr+Ti)=0.3, 0.5 and 0.7 TiZrN film. After heat treatment, TiZrN thin film have no apparent changes in grain size and lattice parameter, and no oxide observed on the surface of thin film at 700°C to 900°C. After heat treatment for 700°C to 900°C, there is no separation X-ray diffraction peaks to split into TiN and ZrN; in other words, there is no spinodal decomposition at vacuum annealed temperature. The hardness of TiZrN thin film decreases from 29 GPa to 25GPa and the residual compressive stress of the film decreases about 40% for all series samples. However, at 1000°C, there is ZrO2 observed on the surface of TiZrN thin films. The oxidation resistance of TiZrN thin films in vacuum at 1000°C was enhanced by incorporation of titanium. After annealing 1000°C for 1 hour to 4 hours, there are partial oxide layers on the top of film. In the composition depth profile in AES, there are ZrO2 phase and TiZrN phase in the partial oxide layer. The growth rate of partial oxide layer is 45 nm/hr and the oxide phase ratio is 26.3% with Ti/(Zr+Ti)=0.3 of TiZrN thin films at 1000°C for 3 hours.