Influence of d.c. substrate bias voltage on growth of cubic boron nitride films by radio frequency sputter

In this paper, the influence of substrate d.c. bias voltage on growth of cu bic boron nitride (c-BN) films by radio frequency (RF) sputter is reported. Boron nitride films were deposited on p-type Si(100) wafers (8-15 Omega cm ) which were biased by the d.c. voltage negatively with respect to ground. The sputtering target was hot pressed hexagonal boron nitride of 4 N purity . The sputtering gas was the mixture of nitrogen and argon. The boron nitri de films were characterized with Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra. At a RF power of 360 W and substrate d.c. bias voltage of - 200 V, the fil ms contained almost pure phase c-BN. It was shown that different substrate d.c. bias voltages resulted in different cubic phase contents in the c-BN f ilms. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.