Nitrogen ion beam-assisted pulsed laser deposition of boron nitride films

This work deals with the study of boron nitride (BN) thin films deposited onto silicon substrates using the ion beam-assisted pulsed laser deposition method. Influence of experimental deposition parameters on the percentage of sp(3) chemical bonds (representative of the cubic BN phase) contained in the deposited film and on chemical composition is presented. The best percentages of sp(3) bonds, up to 80%, are obtained under bombardment by a pure nitrogen ion beam, and we do not observe any significant contribution of argon ions in the bombarding ion beam to the presence of sp(3) bonds in the deposited films. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy performed on various BN films reveal important changes with the type of chemical bonds (sp(2) and sp(3)) contained within these films. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.