Near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy of arcjet-deposited cubic boron nitride

Abstract Near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) spectroscopy was employed to help determine the structure of boron nitride films grown by bias-enhanced chemical vapor deposition in a low-density supersonic arcjet flow. BN films containing 0.90% cubic boron nitride were analyzed by NEXAFS and compared with c-BN and h-BN reference spectra. The mainly cubic films have been shown previously to be nanocrystalline, which leads to the inability to obtain structural information from Raman scattering spectra. However, with NEXAFS, the nanocrystalline nature of the films does not strongly affect the structural interpretation. It is shown that films deposited with a bias of −75 V are primarily sp 3 bonded. This high sp 3 bonding character agrees with previous measrements based on infraredtransmission and reflectance spectroscopy, as well as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.