Interfacial reaction pathways and kinetics during annealing of 111-textured Al/TiN bilayers: A synchrotron x-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy study

Interfacial reactions during annealing of Al/underdense TiN bilayers initiated at the Al/TiN interface was studied. The underdensing in the bilayers was due to the low deposition temperature resulting in kinetically limited adatomic mobilities and atomic shadowing. This inturn results in a columnar microstructure with both inter and intra columnar voids. Transmission electron microscopy and scanning TEM was used to investigate the changes in bilayer microstructure and microchemistry. The Al3Ti growth kinetics was found to be limited on analysis by time dependent x-ray diffraction peak intensities during isothermal annealing.