Determination of composition and thickness of TiN x O y films on silicon by combined x‐ray and nuclear microanalysis

Abstract The stoichiometry and thickness of TiN x O y films has been determined by electron microprobe and nuclear microanalysis. The difficulty arising in the electron microprobe from the interference between NKα and TiLI lines has been overcome by using a suitable Monte Carlo computing scheme. This procedure takes into account the SiKα intensity which was found to be sensitive to composition and thickness of the overlying TiN x O y film. The good agreement between electron microprobe and nuclear microanalysis results indicate the validity of the method.