Monitoring of thin film sputtering by soft X-ray emission spectroscopy

Abstract A high resolution grazing incidence instrument of novel design was used to study X-rays in the 400–500 eV range emitted from a TiN film during reactive magnetron sputtering. The resulst show that it is possible to detect soft X-rays from the film during sputtering, even with a high resolution instrument. The intensity of this emission was insufficient to record spectra in high resolution during deposition. Detailed chemical information of the film during growth required higher intensity. To accomplish this an electron gun was used as an auxiliary means of excitation. With this technique it was possible to record high resolution spectra from TiN of sufficiently good statistics in less than 30 s. The results obtained indicate that a continuous in situ qualitative chemical characterization of the film during sputtering is feasible.