Reactive ion beam deposition of aluminum nitride thin films

Aluminum nitride thin films have been prepared at room temperature by reactive ion beam sputtering for potential use as a passivant and diffusion/anneal cap in compound semiconductor technology. The electrical and optical pro-perties of these films have been studied along with the in-fluence of thermal annealing on the material characteristics. The quality of the films has also been found to improve in the presence of atomic hydrogen during the deposition.