Stress and strain in titanium nitride thin films

Abstract Titanium nitride (TiN) films, with thickness ranging from 0.02 µm to 1.9 µm, were grown by reactive unbalanced magnetron sputter deposition on silicon substrates. The average film stress is highly compressive in thin films and less compressive in thicker films. Two films, with thicknesses of 0.53 µm and 1.63 µm, were subjected to detailed X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. Sin2Ψ analysis was performed, both on films attached to the substrate, as well as on free-standing flakes of the film. The flakes were obtained by dissolving the substrate. Sin2Ψ analysis, both on the films attached to the substrate as well as on the flakes, did not yield straight lines. By combining the sin2Ψ measurements on films attached to the substrate with the sin2Ψ measurements on the flakes we were able to distinguish between a residual deformation of the lattice and the deformation due to the biaxial stress. Following this procedure the stress obtained from wafer curvature and from XRD strain measurements coincides. A residual strain parallel to the growth direction of the crystallites with the direction parallel to the growth direction combined with a changeover in film texture from parallel to growth direction to parallel to growth direction leads us to propose a model explaining the dependence of stress on film thickness in TiN thin films.