LOW-TEMPERATURE DEPOSITION OF TITANIUM NITRIDE

Low temperature deposition (LTD) is an actual frontier in materials si cence and engineering, especially for thin film technology. In this pa per the fundamentals and processing of low temperature deposition of T iN coating are reviewed. The prerequisites of a low temperature deposi tion process are enough good densification, hardness and adhesion of t he deposited coating. The fundamentals of low temperature deposition a re structure zone model and nonequilibrium plasma vapor growth in a co mbined DC and pulsed electromagnetic fields, namely a combination of a DC bias voltage superimposed by a DC pulsed bias voltage with variabl e frequency and peak voltage height. Low temperature deposition proces sing can be realized simply with only stationary electric fields. Howe ver, sensitivity of the product quality to the process parameters is t he main barrier of this processing in the way to mass production. Low temperature deposition processing using the effects of a combined DC a nd pulsed electromagnetic fields has attained some promising results f or the future commercialization. But they need still further systemati c and deep study. The application of low temperature deposition proces sing is not limited in range of low melting substrate materials. It is also important for internal stress control, defect minimization, micr ostructure densification and performance improvement for coatings on b road spectrum of substrate materials as well as for different types of applications.