Structural and surface free energy analysis of vanadium nitride (VN) thin film synthesized via reactive high-frequency magnetron sputtering

This research reports the synthesis of a vanadium nitride (VN) thin film via reactive high-frequency magnetron sputtering of an n-type silicon wafer (Φ2 inches) substrate. The synthesis was performed by varying the substrate temperature at 300°C and 400°C (VN1 and VN2), respectively. X-ray diffraction (XRD) result shows that VN1 and VN2 reveal a Bragg peak at 2θ = 76.9°, which matches the reflection of the (311) plane of VN. Thus, the lone orientation exhibited in VN1 and VN2 coincides with a face-centered cubic structure unit cell connected to the VN cubic system. Further, static contact angle measurement was used to calculate the free surface energy of the samples. Analysis of the results reveals that the increase in substrate temperature led to a descent in surface energy.