Reactively evaporated titanium nitride resistors for microcircuits
Abstract This paper describes a method of fabrication and electrical properties of titanium thin-film resistors. The TiN x and Al films are deposited over the entire substrate and this is followed by the sequential generation of the patterns for the conductive and the resistive films by the usual photolithographic technique. The reactively evaporated resistors have an average resistivity of 300 micro-Ω-cm and TCR values of −80 to +30 ppm/°C for substrate temperatures ranging from 250 to 400°C during deposition at an ambient nitrogen pressure of 6 × 10 −5 torr. Accelerated oven aging tests indicate that the stability is better than about 3 per cent at an oven temperature of 250°C after 100 hr for films having a sheet resistance of 50 Ω/p[ without prestabilization. The technique of thin-film fabrication established in this work appears to have a potential in the realization of high reliability resistors for routine production of thin-film microcircuits.