Preparation And Characteristics Of B-C-N Films

Novel man-made BCN material has stimulated great. interests for its promising application in disk protecting, semiconductor device, etc. due to the extrem mechanical, electrical, and optical properties. The physical properties were significantly affected by bonding states between boron, carbon, and nitrogen atoms. Therefore, it is important to study the bonding states in the BCN films deposited via different experimental parameters.BCN films were deposited by radio frequency magnetron sputtering. The effects of substrate temperature, N2 flow, choice of targets and substrates on bonding states were carefully investigated. Films were characterized by FTIR, XPS, nanoindentation, and UTM-2 Multi-function measurement system. The main contents are given below:(1) Optimizing RF power,work pressure, substrate temperature, the N2 flux,and other parameters, boron carbon nitride films were deposited by radio frequency magnetron sputtering from hexagonal graphite and boron nitride (h-BN) targets in the atmosphere of argon(Ar) and nitrogen(N2). FTIR of BCN films shows that two absorption bands at approximately 1200～800 cm-1 and 2200 cm-1 with weak absorption are displayed, which can be interpreted as C=N and C=N bonding respectively. When graphite h-BN targets were sputtered respectively, FTIR reveals 1100 cm-1 isn't B-C bond. The films deposited by radio frequency magnetron sputtering were inclined to phase separation.(2) Boron-carbon-nitrogen (B-C-N) films were deposited by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering from different targets which were hexagonal boron nitride, boron and graphite targets in the atmosphere of nitrogen and argon. The results of FTIR spectra indicated that there were two wide absorption bands at approximately 1200～1800 cm-1, 1000-1750cm-1 separately and there existed absorption peak of C=N bond at 2200 cm-1. Films which were prepared by boron and carbon targets were a compound of B-C-N atomic hybridization.(3) We investigated the effect of N2/Ar flow ratio on the compositions and bond contents in amorphous B-C-N films synthesized via radio frequency reactive magnetron sputtering technique. B-C-N films were deposited on the silicon substrate with different combination of targets, substrate temperatures, and N2/Ar flow ratios. We found that bond contents and compositions can be efficiently tuned within a certain range of N2/Ar flow ratio. With increasing N2 / Ar flow ratio, main peaks of Bls, Cls and Nls spectra shift toward higher binding energies due to the changes of bond contents. The B-C-N films with atomic-level hybridization show similar values of hardness.(4) Boron-carbon-nitrogen (B-C-N) thin films were deposited on aluminum substrates by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering from graphite and boron targets in a gas mixture of nitrogen and argon. These films were investigated by Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The friction coefficient of the film is low, so the film deposited on the active substrate has beautiful application future.