Bonding structure of carbon nitride films deposited by reactive plasma beam sputtering

This work is devoted to the study of the reactive plasma beam sputtering deposition of carbon nitride thin films. To investigate the variations of the bonding structure, induced by modifying the main deposition parameters, a systematic characterization of the films by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) is performed. With increasing the nitrogen partial pressure, the deposition rate and the nitrogen atomic fraction in the films increase, and the valence band spectrum shape is modified. The curve fitting of the C1s and N1s peak spectra shows that C and N atoms exhibit several chemical states, representative of different type of chemical bonds.