Adjusting chemical bonding of hard amorphous CSixNy thin films by N*-plasma-assisted pulsed laser deposition

Hard amorphous carbon silicon nitride thin films have been grown by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) of various carbon silicon nitride targets by using a n additional nitrogen RF plasma source on [100] oriented silicon substrates ;It room temperature. The influence of the number of laser shots per target site on the growth rate and film surface morphology was studied. Up to abo ut 30 at. % nitrogen and up to 20 at. % silicon were found in the films by Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS) and X-ray photoelectron spectr oscopy (XPS). The XPS of the films showed a clear correlation of binding en ergy to the variation of PLD parameters. The films show a universal hardnes s value up to 23 GPa (reference value for silicon substrate 14 GPa) in depe ndence on target composition and PLD parameters. The results emphasise the possibility of variationof chemical bonding and corresponding properties, s uch as nanohardness, of amorphous CSixNy thin films by the plasma-assisted PLD process.