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Titanium nitride at 750°C in N2
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Can anyone tell me at what temperature Titanium nitride is formed.I'm doing an anneal of a silicon wafer coated with titanium at 750 C.After the anneal the wafer is 'coloured' as if an oxide layer is formed which is impossible since I do the anneal in a N2 environment. Could titanium nitride be formed at that temperature ?
A van Zuuk- Delft, the Netherlands
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Depending on the type of PVD or CVD process, the temperature to form TiN varies from below 250 C to above 500 C. It appears that you have a thin nitride layer on the Ti. Try using another neutral gas such as argon or helium.
Mandar Sunthankar- Fort Collins, Colorado
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I would expect that you will get titanium nitride formation at 750C, but you may have an oxide on the surface. Titanium nitride is not stable against oxide formation at that temperature. Even a small amount of oxygen is sufficient to replace the nitrogen.
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Jim Treglio  Lakeside, California |
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Of course, titanium nitride can be found in the case of annealing in nitrogen at temperatures 750C. It depends among other things on quantity of oxygen in nitrogen. If we consider nitrogen 99,999 it is possible to find nitrides on the surface. If you saw reddish-brown colour - it is TiO2, not nitride. Please take a short look at phase diagram Ti-N, you will see that you can obtain three different types of titanium nitrides at 750C.
Kind regards,
Krzysztof Sadurski- Czestochowa, Slask, Poland
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TiN reacts with oxygen starts from 600C. This I found from my experiments also.As experts said before it is better to do annealing at Ar+N2 atmospheres.. But it is surprising that in nitrogen atmosphere how did it react with O2..
Kiran M- India