Growth and characterization of BON thin films prepared by low frequency RF plasma enhanced MOCVD method

It was first time that low frequency R.F. derived plasma enhanced MOCVD with frimethylborate precursor was used to fabricate a new ternary compound $BO_{x}$ $N_{y}$ . The formation of BON molecule was resulted from nitrogen nitrifying B-O, and forming the angular molecule structure proved by XPS and FT-IR results. The relationship between hardness and film thickness was studied. An thickness-independent hardness was fond about 10 GPa. The empirical calculation of band-gap and UV test result showed that our deposited $BO_{x}$ $N_{y}$ thin film was semiconductor material with 3.4eV of wide band gap. The electrical conductivity, $4.8$\times$10^{-2}$ /($\Omega$.cm)$^{-1}$ also confirmed that $BO_{x}$ $N_{y}$ has a semiconductor property. The roughness detected from the as-grown films showed that there was no serious bombarding effect due to anion in the plasma occurring in the RF frequency derived plasma.