Growth,Characterization And Micro-pattern Fabrication Study Of Iridium/Si₃N₄/Si(100) Thin Film

The crystal structure of metal Iridium is the face-centered cubic (FCC) lattice. The atomic number of iridium is 77 and atomic weight is 192.2. The metal Iridium possesses quite remarkable properties: firstly, harder than any other face centered cubic (FCC) metal; secondly, high tensile strength and high melting point; thirdly, high chemical stability and unique oxidize-resistant; finally, high electrical conductivity. Those unique properties determine the wide application fields of the metal Iridium.In this paper, the discovery of this refractory metal has been firstly reviewed and the properties, characteristics, preparation and research present situation of the metallic iridium thin films have been fully summarized then. The metal Iridium was obtained from the residue of the metal platinum dissolved in the aqua regia with the color of white and slightly yellowish. Since the bulk Iridium is very hard and brittle which is difficult to work with, the thin film technology is applied to expand the application fields of this precious metal. The metallic Iridium thin films possess the same unique properties as the bulk metal. Two main deposition technologies, Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) and Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD), are applied to prepare the iridium thin films. The metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD), electron beam evaporation, pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and magnetron sputtering are quite popular ones.In this paper, the iridium films were deposited in a UHV chamber equipped with multiple magnetron sputters. The DC power of the magnetron sputter was set to be 65 W. The chamber pressure is 2×10^-7 Pa and the substrate is heated to 700℃. Before opening the substrate shutter for film deposition, the Iridium target was pre-sputtered for 3 minutes in order to stabilize the sputter rate and ensure the purity of the film. Under these conditions, the deposition rate was characterized to be 0.15nm/s and the thickness of the deposited iridium films is 100nm. In this work, Si₃N₄/Si(100) was selected as the substrate. The thickness of the Si₃N₄ layer is...