Effect of substrate surface on the structure and electronic properties of cubic boron nitride films
- Department of Chemistry, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, N6A 5B7 (Canada)
Cubic boron nitride (c-BN) films were prepared by mass-selected ion beam deposition (MSIBD) technique. The effects of substrate surface roughness were investigated by boron and nitrogen k-edge x-ray absorption near-edge structure, x-ray diffraction, and atomic force microscopy. All the films are a mixture of nanocrystalline sp{sup 3}-bonded c-BN and sp{sup 2}-bonded BN phases. The substrate with a rough surface causes a decrease of the c-BN phase content of the film on it. A significant large lattice contraction of the c-BN crystallites in the films, relative to the bulk, is observed. It is also found that the electronic structure of the nanocrystalline c-BN films by MSIBD technique is somewhat different from that of microcrystalline c-BN/h-BN references. We attribute the effect of the nature of the substrate on the morphology and structure of the c-BN films to the orientation of sp{sup 2}-bonded graphitic BN basal plane on the top surface of the films during their growth, and the lattice contraction and energy band structure modification of c-BN films to the large compressive stress, respectively.
- OSTI ID:
- 20879968
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 100, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2213349; (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0021-8979
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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