Effects of high‐flux low‐energy (20–100 eV) ion irradiation during deposition on the microstructure and preferred orientation of Ti0.5Al0.5N alloys grown by ultra‐high‐vacuum reactive magnetron sputtering

The effects of incident ion/metal flux ratio Ji/JMe and ion energy Ei on the microstructure, texture, and phase composition of polycrystalline metastable Ti0.5Al0.5N films produced by reactive magnetron sputtering have been investigated using x‐ray diffraction (XRD), plan‐view and cross‐sectional transmission electron microscopy, and Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy. The films, typically ≂1 μm thick, were deposited at a pressure of 20 mTorr (2.67 Pa) in pure N2 on thermally oxidized Si(001) substrates at 250±25 °C. The N2+ ion flux to the substrate was controlled by means of a variable axial magnetic field superimposed on the permanent magnetic field of the magnetron. Films deposited at Ei=20 eV (≂10 eV per incident accelerated N) with Ji/JMe=1 exhibited a complete (111) texture with a porous columnar microstructure and an average column size of ≂30 nm. Increasing Ei from 20 to 85 eV, while maintaining Ji/JMe constant at 1, resulted in a small change in texture as the XRD intensity ratio I002/(I111+...