Thermal stability of Zr-O-N(:Ti) thin films prepared by magnetron sputtering

To facilitate the phase identification, the intensity of the different peaks in the XRD patterns was tuned to highlight the weaker ones. In addition, the intensity of representative peaks of the main phases has been monitored to represent the overall behavior under heating. It has been found that the structure of the films evolves to the formation of ZrO2, the phase with tetragonal symmetry at lower temperature and the monoclinic one at higher temperature. Films including Ti showed an improved thermal stability, without the formation of the monoclinic oxide even at 1000 °C.