Problems in the Determination of Internal Stresses in Plasma Assisted CVD TiN Films

The measurement of internal stresses in a PACVD TiN film proved experimentally to be difficult bya conventional X-ray diffraction technique.The linear relationship between 2θ and sin~2(?) couldhardly be reached in some cases.Nevertheless.a good confirmation between the variation ofFWHM-sin~2(?) and 20-sin~2(?) was revealed for every nonlinear forms.It followed that the effect ofnondistributed micro-strains might exist in plasma assisted vapor deposited films,which usuallyhave a strong crystal orientation,and the method of effectively separating macro-stress andmicro-strain must be applied for the precise determination of internal stresses in PACVD films.

Problems in the Determination of Internal Stresses in Plasma Assisted CVD TiN Films

The measurement of internal stresses in a PACVD TiN film proved experimentally to be difficult by a conventional X-ray diffraction technique.The linear relationship between 2θ and sin~2(?) could hardly be reached in some cases.Nevertheless.a good confirmation between the variation of FWHM-sin~2(?) and 20-sin~2(?) was revealed for every nonlinear forms.It followed that the effect of nondistributed micro-strains might exist in plasma assisted vapor deposited films,which usually have a strong crystal orientation,and the method of effectively separating macro-stress and micro-strain must be applied for the precise determination of internal stresses in PACVD films.