Fracture toughness and plasticity evaluation of sputter deposited tantalum nitride thin film

Although tantalum nitride coatings have recently been attracted researchers’ attentions due to their high hardness and corrosion resistance, the fracture toughness and deformation plasticity of thin tantalum nitride film has not been well investigated yet. In this research, for the first time, the fracture toughness, strain rate sensitivity and plasticity of sputter deposited tantalum nitride thin films have been evaluated using nano indentation technique and SEM micrographs. It was shown that the fracture toughness was increases from 0.6 to 7.8 MPa√m with increasing the nitrogen in sputtering chamber. This increase was attributed to the structural evolution from a hexagonal γ-Ta2N phase to the hexagonal ε-TaN and face centered cubic δ-TaN phases, determined by X-Ray Diffraction analysis. The plasticity of the TaN films evaluations indicated that the ratio of plastic work to total work was increased from 50% to 57% and 80%with phase variation from γ-Ta2N to ε-TaN and δ-TaN, respectively.