Aluminum nitride having a dense hexagonal structure is used as a high-temperature material because of its excellent heat resistance and high mechanical strength; its excellent piezoelectric properties are also attracting attention. The structure and residual stress of AlN thin films formed on glass substrate using TFT sputtering system are examined by XRD. The deposition conditions are nitrogen gas pressures of 1 × 102, 6 × 103, and 3 × 103, substrate temperature of 523 K, and sputtering time of 120 min. The structure of the AlN thin film is columnar, having a c-axis, i.e., a <00·1> orientation, which is the normal direction of the glass substrate. An X-ray stress measurement method for crystalline thin films with orientation properties such as columnar structure is proposed and applied to the residual stress measurement of AlN thin films with orientation <00·1>. Strength of diffraction lines other than 00·2 diffraction is very weak. As a result of stress measurement using AlN powder sample as a comparative standard sample, tensile residual stress is obtained when the nitrogen gas pressure is low, but the gas pressure increases as the residual stress is shifts toward compression. At low gas pressure, the unit cell expands due to the incorporation of excess nitrogen atoms.

In this study, we investigate the effect of Al/N source ratios and growth rates on the growth and structural properties of AlN films on c-plane sapphires by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy. Both growth rates and Al/N ratios affect crystal qualities of AlN films. The full width at half maximum (FWHM) values of (1015) X-ray rocking curves (XRCs) change from 0.22 to 0.31° with changing of the Al/N ratios, but the curves of (0002) XRCs change from 0.04 to 0.45° with changing of the Al/N ratios. This means that structural deformation due to dislocations is slightly affected by the Al/N ratio in the (1015) XRCs but affected strongly for the (0002) XRCs. From the viewpoint of growth rate, the AlN films with high growth rate (HGR) show better crystal quality than the low growth rate (LGR) films overall, as shown by the FWHM values of the (0002) and (1015) XRCs. Based on cross-sectional transmission electron microscope observation, the HGR sample with an Al/N ratio of 3.1 shows more edge dislocations than there are screw and mixed dislocations in the LGR sample with Al/N ratio of 3.5.

Aluminum nitride, a compound semiconductor, has a Wurtzite structure; good material properties such as high thermal conductivity, great electric conductivity, high dielectric breakdown strength, a wide energy band gap (6.2eV), a fast elastic wave speed; and excellent in thermal and chemical stability. Furthermore, the thermal expansion coefficient of the aluminum nitride is similar to those of Si and GaAs. Due to these characteristics, aluminum nitride can be applied to electric packaging components, dielectric materials, SAW (surface acoustic wave) devices, and photoelectric devices. In this study, we surveyed the crystallization and preferred orientation of AlN thin films with an X-ray diffractometer. To fabricate the AlN thin film, we used the magnetron sputtering method with N2, NH3 and Ar. According to an increase in the partial pressures of N2 and NH3, Al was nitrified and deposited onto a substrate in a molecular form. When AlN was fabricated with N2, it showed a c-axis orientation and tended toward a high orientation with an increase in the temperature. On the other hand, when AlN was fabricated with NH3, it showed a-axis orientation. This result is coincident with the proposed mechanism. We fabricated AlN thin films with an a-axis orientation by controlling the sputtering electric power, NH3 pressure, deposition speed, and substrate temperature. According to the proposed mechanism, we also fabricated AlN thin films which demonstrated high aaxis and c-axis orientations.

We report growth of epitaxial AlN thin films on c-plane sapphire substrates by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy. To achieve two-dimensional growth the substrates were nitrided by nitrogen plasma prior to the AlN growth, which resulted in the formation of a two-dimensional single crystalline AlN layer. The formation of the two-dimensional AlN layer by the nitridation process was confirmed by the observation of streaky reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED) patterns. The growth of AlN thin films was performed on the nitrided AlN layer by changing the Al beam flux with the fixed nitrogen flux at 860˚C. The growth mode of AlN films was also affected by the beam flux. By increasing the Al beam flux, two-dimensional growth of AlN films was favored, and a very flat surface with a root mean square roughness of 0.196 nm (for the 2 μm × 2 μm area) was obtained. Interestingly, additional diffraction lines were observed for the two-dimensionally grown AlN films, which were probably caused by the Al adlayer, which was similar to a report of Ga adlayer in the two-dimensional growth of GaN. Al droplets were observed in the sample grown with a higher Al beam flux after cooling to room temperature, which resulted from the excessive Al flux.

This paper describes the fabrication of AlN thin films containing iron and iron nitride particles, and the magnetic and electrical properties of such films. Fe-N-Al alloy films were deposited in Ar and N2 mixtures at ambient temperature using Fe/Al composite targets in a two-facing-target DC sputtering system. X-ray diffraction results showed that the Fe-N-Al films were amorphous, and after annealing for 5 h both AlN and bcc-Fe/bct-FeNx phases appeared. Structure changes in the FeNx phases were explained in terms of occupied nitrogen atoms. Electron diffraction and transmission electron microscopy observations revealed that iron and iron nitride particles were randomly dispersed in annealed AlN films. The grain size of magnetic particles ranged from 5 to 20 nm in diameter depending on annealing conditions. The saturation magnetization as a function of the annealing time for the Fe55N20Al25 films when annealed at 573, 773 and 873 K. At these temperatures, the amount of iron/iron nitride particles increased with increasing annealing time. An increase in the saturation magnetization is explained qualitatively in terms of the amount of such magnetic particles in the film. The resistivity increased monotonously with decreasing Fe content, being consistent with randomly dispersed iron/iron nitride particles in the AlN film. The coercive force was evaluated to be larger than 6.4×103Am-1 (80 Oe). This large value is ascribed to a residual stress restrained in the ferromagnetic particles, which is considered to be related to the present preparation process.