Sputter-deposition of Ag films in a nitrogen discharge

In general, the presence of a reactive gas in the sputtering atmosphere must be avoided to prevent the formation of any other phases during the preparation of metal films. However, we hypothesized that films of metals, which do not form a nitride phase, could be prepared even in 100% nitrogen. Ag films were sputter-deposited in nitrogen and characterized. We found that it is feasible to obtain pure Ag films by rf sputtering in a nitrogen discharge. No other phase but Ag was detected by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis and nitrogen was not detected in the film by Auger electron spectroscopy. Electrical resistivity was also as low as 2.8 μΩ cm. Moreover, we found that Ag films thus deposited at a substrate temperature of 100 °C exhibited preferential orientation of (100), though that of (111) is generally observed in films sputtered in Ar. At other substrate temperatures, the degree of (100) orientation decreased. Consequently, we have found that sputter-deposition by the present method is useful for preparing pure Ag films with texture controlled by selecting the appropriate conditions.NOTICE: This is the author's version of a work accepted for publication by Elsevier. Changes resulting from the publishing process, including peer review, editing, corrections, structual formatting and other quality control mechanisms , may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been to this work since it was submitted for publication