The influence of boron implantation into silicon substrate on the internal stress and adhesion strength of c-BN films

Cubic boron nitride(c-BN) films were deposited on silicon substrate with boron implanted buffer layer by RF-magnetron sputtering. The most serious problems for c-BN film is high residual stress and low adhesion strength to a substrate. In order to improve the adhesion of the c-BN film, the boron implanted buffer layer was introduced to improve the interface state between the film and substrate. The experiment results showed that the boron implanted buffer layer can reduce the internal stress and improve the adhesion strength of the films obviously. The critical load of scratch test rises to 44.5 N, compared to 7.5 N of c-BN film on the unimplanted silicon. Then the composition and organization of the boron implanted layer was analyzed by XPS. And the influence of boron implanted layer on the internal stress and adhesion strength of c-BN films were investigated. (C) 2006 Published by Elsevier B.V.