Investigation about the effect of trace oxygen on the plasma nitriding of titanium foil

Abstract Titanium nitride films are prepared by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition method on titanium foil using N2 as precursor. In order to evaluate the effect of oxygen on the growth of titanium nitride films, a small amount of O2 is introduced into the preparation process. The study indicates that trace O2 addition into the reaction chamber gives rise to significant changes on the color and micro-morphology of the foil, featuring dense and long nano-wires. The as-synthesized nanostructures are characterized by various methods and identified as TiN, Ti2N and TiO2 respectively. Moreover, the experiment results show that oxide nanowire has a high degree of crystallinity and the nitrides present specific orientation relationships with the titanium matrix.