Titanium interlayer to improve the adhesion of multilayer amorphous boron carbide coating on silicon substrate

Abstract Boron-based coatings can be very useful in neutrons detection application. Here, stable boron carbon (B-C) films in nanometer scale were deposited on silicon substrates with titanium interlayer by RF plasma magnetron sputtering. Ti interlayer is likely to decrease the internal stress at the substrate–film interface, thus smoothing the difference in lattice parameters between the growing film and substrate. The B-C/Ti/Si coatings were characterized using SEM, EDS, AFM and XRD. The enhancement in adhesion of the B-C film to the substrate was analyzed by a scratch tester measurements.