Characterization of Microroughness Parameters in Titanium Nitride Thin Films Grown by DC Magnetron Sputtering

The morphological parameter of a thin film surface can be characterized by power spectral density (PSD) functions which provide a better description to the topography than the root mean square roughness and imparts several useful information of the surface including fractal and superstructure contributions. In the present work PSD spectra computed from atomic force microscopy (AFM) data were used for studying the morphology of three different titanium nitride thin films obtained by dc magnetron sputtering system. The power values of PSD for the AFM data were determined by the fast Fourier transforms algorithms. We investigate the effect of substrate temperature and crystallite sizes on the roughness of thin films surface.