| The construction and the operation mode of an ultrahigh vacuum PVD system with integrated electron spectroscopic surface analysis is described. It consists of two metal-ion beam sources and a nitrogen radical beam source. High-energy electron diffraction (HEED) with grazing incidence of the electron beam is applied in-situ to determine the crystallographic data, as texture and structure of the growing layer. Chemical composition and bonding states of the components of the layer are determined also in-situ using an Auger electron spectrometer (AES), in-situ is taken to mean that analysis takes place during deposition of the layer. This work shows that the information depth of HEED with grazing incidence of the beam (α < 1°) is of the same order of magnitude as the information depth of AES i.e. a few atom layers. This enables constitution and structure of the near-surface region of the growing layer to be directly determined as a function of the PVD parameters. In the initial experiments Cu/Al bilayers, homogeneous Cu3N and heterogeneous Cu/Cu3N layers were deposited. The influence of the Cu-ion energy and of the radical portion in the nitrogen reactive gas on the formation of the homogeneous Cu3N layer was investigated. |
