Physical properties of epitaxial ZrN/MgO(001) layers grown by reactive magnetron sputtering

Single-crystal ZrN films, 830 nm thick, are grown on MgO(001) at 450 °C by magnetically unbalanced reactive magnetron sputtering. The combination of high-resolution x-ray diffraction reciprocal lattice maps, high-resolution cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy, and selected-area electron diffraction shows that ZrN grows epitaxially on MgO(001) with a cube-on-cube orientational relationship, (001)_ZrN(001)_MgO and [100]_ZrN[100]_MgO. The layers are essentially fully relaxed with a lattice parameter of 0.4575 nm, in good agreement with reported results for bulk ZrN crystals. X-ray reflectivity results reveal that the films are completely dense with smooth surfaces (roughness = 1.3 nm, consistent with atomic-force microscopy analyses). Based on temperature-dependent electronic transport measurements, epitaxial ZrN/MgO(001) layers have a room-temperature resistivity ρ_300K of 12.0 μΩ-cm, a temperature coefficient of resistivity between 100 and 300 K of 5.6 × 10^-8 Ω-cm K^-1, a residual resistivity ρ_o below 30 K of 0.78 μΩ-cm (corresponding to a residual resistivity ratio ρ_300Κ/ρ_15K = 15), and the layers exhibit a superconducting transition temperature of 10.4 K. The relatively high residual resistivity ratio, combined with long in-plane and out-of-plane x-ray coherence lengths, ξ = 18 nm and ξ_b = 161 nm, indicates high crystalline quality with low mosaicity. The reflectance of ZrN(001), as determined by variable-angle spectroscopic ellipsometry, decreases slowly from 95% at 1 eV to 90% at 2 eV with a reflectance edge at 3.04 eV. Interband transitions dominate the dielectric response above 2 eV. The ZrN(001) nanoindentation hardness and modulus are 22.7 ± 1.7 and 450 ± 25 GPa.