Epitaxial growth of chromium nitride thin films with addition of silicon. Issue 6 (9th April 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Suzuki, Kazuma; Suzuki, Tsuneo; Endo, Toshiyuki; Nakayama, Tadachika; Suematsu, Hisayuki; Niihara, Koichi; Tsuboi, Nozomu; Wakita, Kazuki; Yamada, Akira; Shirakata, Sho; Wada, Takahiro; Niki, Shigeru; Imaizumi, Mitsuru; Hara, Kazuhiko; Uchitomi, Naotaka
• Is Part Of: Physica status solidi. Volume 12:Issue 6(2015:Jun.)
• Page Start: 545
• Page End: 548
• Publication Date: 2015-04-09
• Subjects: Solid state physics -- Congresses; Solid state physics -- Periodicals; Solid state physics; Conference proceedings; Periodicals; 530.41
• DOI: 10.1002/pssc.201400281
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1862-6351

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main" xml:lang="en"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>Epitaxial Cr‐Si‐N thin films were prepared on MgO (100) substrates with a misfit of ‐1.7% with respect to CrN, by pulsed laser deposition. The Si content in the thin films were controlled by varying the ratio of target surface area of Si for Cr. X‐ray diffraction and microstructure observation showed that the thin films were epitaxially grown with the Si contents up to 10 mol% and no grain boundary could be observed. It was considered that the epitaxial thin films consisted of (Cr, Si)N phase, which was synthesized by partial replacement of Cr in CrN lattice with Si. The thin films with the Si contents above 11 mol% formed the polycrystalline. The hardness of the epitaxial Cr‐Si‐N thin films increased with increasing the Si content and the thin films showed the maximum hardness value of 51 GPa. It was considered that the hardening was caused by dissolution of Si in CrN. (© 2015 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH &amp; Co. KGaA, Weinheim)</p> </abstract>