• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
• /
• v.34 no.2
• /
• pp.209-215
• /
• 1997

Aluminum nitride(AIN) thin films were deposited by reactive single ion beam sputtering using N2 or NH3 as reactive gas. The structural, compositional and optical properties of AIN thin films were characterized by XRD, GAXRD, TEM, SEM, XPS UV/VIS spectrophotometer, and FT-IR. All the deposited AIN thin films were amorphous by the analysis fo XRD and GAXRD. However, TEM analysis showed that AIN nano-crystallites were uniformly distributed in the films. The presence of Al-N bonds were also confirmed by FT-IR and XPS analyses. The optical bandgap of AIN films increased up to 6.2 eV and the transmittance was a-bout 100% in visible range with approaching the stoichimetric composition. Irrespective of using N2 or NH3 as reactive gas, the deposited AIN thin films had very smooth surface morphologies. Their refractive index ranged from 1.6 to 1.7.