Nitrogen incorporation and loss during ion nitriding of Al

Ion nitriding of Al has been performed by a nitrogen reactive ion beam usin g a hot filament ion source. The N incorporation and loss has been determin ed at a beam energy of 1.6 keV with two ion current densities of 0.1 and 0. 2 mA/cm(2), and a substrate temperature of 350 degreesC. For this purpose, the ion beam has been characterised by an energy selective mass spectromete r, showing solely of N-2(+) and N+ ions with a composition of about 80% and 20%, respectively. The ion energy distributions of both N-2(+) and N+ cons ist of a single narrow peak with a full width at half maximum of about 10 e V. From the beam parameters, N loss due to sputtering and backscattering ha s been calculated using dynamic binary collision computer simulations. Afte r an initial transient, the stationary partial sputtering yield of N is pre dicted to be 0.43, while the amount of backscattered N is about 4% of the i ncident N fluence. The total amount of incorporated N measured by nuclear r eaction analysis (NRA) is consistent with the incident N fluence and the N loss obtained from the simulation. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All right s reserved.