Effect of working pressure and annealing temperature on single-phase AlN films

摘要

Single-phase aluminum nitride (AlN) films were synthesized on Si substrates by RF sputtering at different working pressures and different annealing temperatures. Effect of two factors on crystal quality, surface roughness and molecular structure was investigated. As the working pressure rose, the crystal quality of AlN films first increased and then decreased, reaching the best quality at the pressure of 0.7 Pa in the range of 0.3-2.5 Pa. When the annealing temperature was 100 degrees C, root-mean-square surface roughness was greatly reduced from 1.510 nm to 0.554 nm. In addition annealing technology could evidently enhance Al-N covalent bond density. In short, this work provides an effective approach to fabricate high-quality AlN (1 0 0) films for future applications of AlN-based devices. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.