Morphological, Mechanical Property Analysis and Comparative Study over Structural Properties of CVD TiN Film Grown under Different Substrate Temperature in Nitrogen Gas Atmosphere

Titanium Nitride (TiN) thin films were deposited by thermal chemical vapor deposition process (CVD) over Si (100) substrate under different substrate temperatures. Morphological, mechanical, and structural properties were characterized by different techniques e.g. SEM, AFM, Nanoindentation and XRD. SEM images reveal the presence of agglomerated particles over the surface and AFM images reveal the enhancement of surface roughness with higher deposition temperature. The analysis of electrochemical polarization and electrochemical properties of TiN coatings reveals decrease in corrosion resistance with increase in process temperature. The nanoindentation analysis has confirmed that TiN coating possess maximum fracture toughness (K_C), hardness (H), and Young’s modulus (E_f) when synthesized at the temperature of 1150 °C. For comparative study, an analysis over structural properties using different models e.g. UDM, UDEM, SSP etc. have been used in this study. The data analysis of TiN coatings are carried out by using Origin 9.0 software.