The rare-earth nitrides (REN) are a fascinating class of materials owing to their multifunctional properties. However, their strong oxophilic nature at ambient conditions hindered the success in growing these materials with a proper control over composition. This hampered the realisation of devices based on RENs for spintronic applications. Nevertheless, with the advances in film growth techniques especially using UHV conditions, such as molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and ion-assisted deposition (IAD), significant progress has been made. Recent reports on epitaxial growth of REN's (GdN) by PVD routes using buffer-layers is quite encouraging. The use of metalorganic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) in terms of scale up (large area, conformality) is more appealing to grow RENs. In our earlier reports we demonstrated for the first time the fabrication of GdN and DyN films on Si substrates by MOCVD using tailored molecular precursors. Compared to GdN, the reports on other REN is even few. Yttrium nitride (YN) is an almost unexplored material although theoretical studies claim it to be semiconductor with a band gap of about 0.8 eV and doped YN films are magnetic semiconductors. Barring the three publications on PVD grown YN, there are no other experimental reports on this material. Herein, we report for the first time on the growth of YN films by MOCVD on Si substrates using tailored complexes of Y. The films are less sensitive to oxidation compared to GdN and DyN and the crystallinity was strongly dependent on the processing conditions. The structural, morphological and functional properties were investigated. The composition analysis revealed carbon contaminations of about 1% and oxygen below 10%. Furthermore, the electrical properties analysed using standard four-point probe measurements, revealed resistivity values of about 20-40 mO cm. These observations reveal the potential of MOCVD for the growth of REN's using tailored RE precursors.

Yttrium nitride thin films: A first study on the growth of YN by MOCVD

246th National Meeting (2013)

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