Growth and characterisation of Al _1-xCr _xN thin films by RF plasma assisted pulsed laser deposition

Arnold, B.J.; Krishnamurthy, S.; Kennedy, B.; Cockburn, D.; McNally, D.; Lunney, J.G.; Gunning, R.; Venkatesan, M.; Alaria, J.; Michael, J.; Coey, D.; McGuinnessy, C. and Guo, J.-H. (2009). Growth and characterisation of Al _1-xCr _xN thin films by RF plasma assisted pulsed laser deposition. e-Journal of Surface Science and Nanotechnology, 7 pp. 497–502.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1380/ejssnt.2009.497

URL: http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0...

Abstract

Thin films of AlN, CrN and Al _1-xCr _xN were grown epitaxially on c-cut sapphire by radio frequency (RF) plasma assisted pulsed laser deposition (PLD). The PLD growth mode employed for these Al _1-xCr _xN films was by delta doping layers of CrN 0.05-0.10 nm thick between layers of AlN of approximately 3.6 nm thick giving an estimated 1.3% and 2.5% Cr doping. The substrate temperature, nitrogen pressure and power parameters of the RF plasma were varied to optimize crystalline growth. X-ray diffraction (XRD) confirmed hexagonal wurtzite thin film growth of highly crystalline AlN and highly crystalline cubic CrN. The electronic structure of these thin films was examined by x-ray absorption (XAS) and soft x-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) at the N K edge. These measurements are compared with the results of density functional calculations for wurtzite-AlN, cubic-CrN and wurtzite-Al _1-xCr _xN.

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