Regular Article

Characterizing the physicochemical and mechanical properties of ZrN thin films deposited on Zr substrates by pulsed laser technique

¹ Centre de Développement des Technologies Avancées (CDTA), Cité 20 août 1956, Baba Hassen, BP: 17, DZ-16303, Algiers, Algeria
² Faculté de Physique, USTHB, BP 32 El-Alia, Algiers, Algeria
³ Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Sevilla, Universidad de Sevilla-CSIC, Americo Vespucio 49, 41092 Sevilla, Spain
⁴ Centre Nucléaire de Draria, Draria, Algiers, Algeria

^* e-mail: ghemrasi@hotmail.fr

Received: 18 March 2021
Received in final form: 16 June 2021
Accepted: 28 June 2021
Published online: 21 July 2021

Abstract

Due to their outstanding physical and mechanical features, ZrN thin films are increasingly used as coatings to protect materials intended for nuclear applications such as Zirconium. To our knowledge, there is no report of pulsed laser deposition (PLD) of ZrN thin films on a Zr substrate. In this work, we have successfully prepared ZrN thin films on Zr substrates using the PLD technique with a KrF excimer laser, in a N₂ environment at 2 Pa pressure and a fixed substrate temperature of 500 °C. The deposited 200 nm ZrN thin films exhibited a homogeneous surface and showed a face-centered cubic polycrystalline structure. The surface roughness was 3.69 nm. X-ray diffraction, Raman and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements confirmed the presence of ZrN. The coated sample's mean value of hardness (11.6 GP) doubled that of the uncoated sample.