Temperature influence on mechanical properties of chromium nitride thin films

Thin films present interest for researchers due to their applicability in areas such as developing microelecromechanical devices, hard coatings, cutting tools and diffusion barriers. This paper is focused on studying the influence of the testing temperature on the mechanical properties of chromium nitride (CrN) thin films. For this purpose, CrN thin films were deposited by direct current magnetron sputtering on silicon substrate using a chromium target of high purity. All the films were obtained by keeping almost all deposition parameters constant, while the nitrogen flow rate was varied. Hence, three types of samples of CrN thin films were obtained using different nitrogen flow rates namely 2 cm3/min, 4 cm3/min and 6 cm3/min. The mechanical properties of these thin films such as the hardness and Young’s modulus were investigated by performing nanoindentation using an atomic force microscope. All experimental investigations were conducted by varying the testing temperature between 20 oC and 100 oC. The purpose was to find the dependency between the testing temperature and the mechanical properties of CrN films deposited at different nitrogen flow rates. The obtained experimental results indicate a significant influence of the testing temperature on the properties of the studied CrN thin films.