Effect of nitrogen gas on the properties of Cu thin filmsDeposited by DC Reactive Magnetron Sputtering

Cu thin films have been deposited on glass substrates by dc reactive magnetron sputtering. the effect of nitrogen gas on structural, optical and electrical properties of films as well as film hardness was investigated. atomic force microscopy (afm) was used to evaluate the surface roughness. the film hardness and phase composition were characterized by measuring vickers hardness number (vhn) and x-ray diffraction(xrd). also we used uv-vis-nir spectrophotometer to investigate the optical properties of samples. finally the electrical resistivity of the films was measured by four-point probe(fpp) method. rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (rbs) analysis was used tomeasure thicknesses and nitrogen content of the films. results show that, the roughness,resistivity and also reflectance of the cu-n thin films decreased and the hardness of the samples increased with increasing the sputtering time by nitrogen gas on cu thin films.