Resistivities of titanium nitride films prepared onto silicon by an ion beam assisted deposition method

Cubic titanium nitride (TiN) films preferentially oriented to the (200) lattice plane were deposited onto (111) silicon wafers using an ion beam assisted deposition technique with an electron cyclotron resonance ion source for ionizing nitrogen gas and an electron beam evaporator for evaporating Ti metals. The resistivities of the TiN films were inversely proportional to the average size of the crystallites making up the TiN films and decreased with increasing substrate temperature and film thickness. TiN films thicker than 50 nm had resistivities around 30 µ Ω cm, slightly higher than the resistivities of TiN crystals.