Specialized investigations on physical and morphological features of TiC thin films synthesized by PECVD method

Plasma Physics Research Center, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

^a e-mail: alipour_r@ymail.com

Received: 8 June 2015
Revised: 24 June 2015
Accepted: 25 June 2015
Published online: 29 July 2015

Abstract

Deposition of titanium carbide (TiC) thin film on 304 stainless steel was investigated by the plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) method using a 5% C₂H₂ + 95% Ar gas mixture as a reactant gases and carbon source with titanium plate as a target. Physical and mechanical properties of the synthesized TiC thin film on 304 stainless steel were studied to determine its potential application as a protective layer for first wall of Tokamaks. X-ray diffraction (XRD) showed that the crystalline structures of TiC (111 and 220) for sample without annealing and TiC (111, 220 and 311) for sample with annealing at 1000 °C for 1 h, was formed. The XPS Ti 2p spectrum of sample shows two peaks related to the binding energies of 455.3 eV (the photoelectron peaks of Ti 2p 3/2) and 460.9 eV (the photoelectron peaks of Ti 2p 1/2). Also, the C 1s spectra with the binding energy of 281.3 eV was seen in XPS analysis. TiC film of about 10.9 μm thickness was observed on scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image. The morphological feature like statistical parameters, the motifs analysis and the watershed segmentation of the thin film 3D surface of TiC films were investigated by the AFM analysis and MountainsMap Premium 7.2 (64-bit version) and Gwyddion softwares. Also, the effect of annealing on Minkowski functionals of TiC samples were studied. At the end, we can conclude that TiC NPs synthesized in this work by PECVD method have uniformly deposition. All results of AFM analysis provide general insight of nanostructures and properties of these thin films and can be used to achieve to a new topography model of the thin film 3D surface.