Tunable electrical and optical properties of hafnium nitride thin films

We report structural and electronic properties of epitaxial hafnium nitride films grown on MgO by plasma-assisted pulsed laser deposition. The electronic structure measured using soft x-ray absorption and emission spectroscopy is in excellent agreement with the results of a band structure calculation. We show that by varying the growth conditions we can extend the films’ reflectance further toward the UV, and we relate this observation to the electronic structure.