Electrical and structural properties of the Ta/Ag thin films prepared by DC magnetron sputtering

Abstract

Tantalum on silver (Ta/Ag) thin films have quickly increased into high research for applied science with the promise of suitable for high temperatures environments and microsystems for electronics applications. Ag and Ta/Ag thin films were deposited on silicon substrates by dc magnetron sputtering method. We choose the dc magnetron sputtering method because it has many advantages, such as high growth rate, the possibility of large area deposition, and low cost. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis and four point probe (FPP) were used for determining the prepared samples. For Ag thin film deposited in room temperature, there are no peaks corresponding to Ag in the XRD pattern which demonstrates amorphous structure. Also, the XRD pattern of Ta/Ag thin film illustrates that the peak of Ta has grown to the crystal direction (002), which shows that the structure of deposited Ta layer on Ag thin film becomes a crystalline state from amorphous state. The relationship between thin film resistivity and Ta/Ag film thicknesses are investigated in this paper.