Stress, microstructure and materials reliability of sputter-deposited Fe-N films

Sputtered Fe-N films with various nitrogen contents were investigated from point of view of device manufacturing. As-deposited Fe-N films have compressive stress that becomes tensile due to heat treatment. At optimum N content where soft magnetic properties were realized, the film shows a close to amorphous microstructure. Compared to NiFe, Fe-N has higher reactivity with humidity and lower reactivity with atmospheric pollutants such as Cl and S.<
>