Correlations between optical properties, microstructure, and processing conditions of Aluminum nitride thin films fabricated by pulsed laser deposition

Aluminum nitride (AlN) films were deposited using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) onto sapphire (0001) substrates with varying processing conditions (temperature, pressure, and laser fluence). We have studied the dependence of optical properties, structural properties and their correlations for these AlN films. The optical transmission spectra of the produced films were measured, and a numerical procedure was applied to accurately determine the optical constants for films of non-uniform thickness. The microstructure and texture of the films were studied using various X-ray diffraction techniques. The real part of the refractive index was found to not vary significantly with processing parameters, but absorption was found to be strongly dependent on the deposition temperature and the nitrogen pressure in the deposition chamber. We report that low optical absorption, textured polycrystalline AlN films can be produced by PLD on sapphire substrates at both low and high laser fluence using a background nitrogen pressure of 6.0 × 10− 2 Pa (4.5 × 10− 4 Torr) of 99.9% purity.