Nitrides electron beam evaporation

The other platform is dielectrics, for example, silicon dioxide, silicon nitride, silicon oxynitride, tantalum pentoxide, and titanium dioxide. They can be deposited by various methods, such as plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition, thermal evaporation, electron-beam evaporation, and sputtering. There are a number of dielectrics with refractive indices ranging from 1.45 to 2.4, facilitating diverse waveguide designs to satisfy different specification. Dielectrics have two other... 

From the comparison of phases of synthesized UFPs with those of residual materials after vaporizing in N2 and NH3 gas, the following process can be suggested for the formation of nitride UFPs by the electron beam evaporation ... 

In [55] a large-area fabrication of hexagonally ordered metal dot arrays with an area density of 10u/cm2 was demonstrated. The metal dots were produced by an electron beam evaporation followed by a lift-off process. The dots size was 20 nm dots with a 40 nm period by combining block copolymer nanolithography and a trilayer resist technique. A self-assembled spherical-phase block copolymer top layer spontaneously generated the pattern, acting as a template. The pattern was first transferred to a silicon nitride middle layer by reactive ion etch, producing holes. The nitride layer was then used as a mask to further etch into a polyamide bottom layer. 

A technique which has received increasing interest in the last few years is the preparation of cubic nitride films by activated reactive evaporation with a gas activation nozzle [111 to 115]. While the boron is evaporated by an electron beam, nitrogen (with admixed argon) is activated in the nozzle supplied with a positive bias. Electrons thus attracted to the nozzle from the plasma zone enhance the discharge in the vicinity of the gas outlet. Acceleration of the ionized species towards the substrate is achieved by connecting it to a negative radiofrequency bias [111]. 

Titanium nitride is the material of choice for the coating of high-speed steel cutting tools. It is usually applied by physical vapor deposition (reactive sputtering or evaporation by electron-beam heating). These processes are preferred over CVD since the deposition temperature is below the autenitizing temperature of the steel and the tool is not dimensionally distorted. 

As a conclusion of this section, let us characterise briefly the electronic structure investigations of one more group of materials whose properties are greatly dependent on surface effects. These are thin films made from refractory carbides and nitrides. These films find applications in microelectronics, optics and as coatings for cutting tools and other complicated multilayered materials. Such films can be produced by different methods, such as thermal deposition or laser evaporation, (Morchan, 1982), molecular-beam epitaxy and cathode sputtering (Herman, 1982 Cho, 1983), plasma condensation in vacuum with ionic bombardment of the substrate surface (Dorodnov and Potrosov, 1981), chemical vapour-phase deposition (Anikeev, 1977 Anikin, Anikeev and Zolotaryova, 1979), etc. 

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