Electronic structure simulation of chromium aluminum oxynitride by discrete variational-Xα method and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

We use a first-principles discrete variational (DV)-Xalpha method to investigate the electronic structure of chromium aluminum oxynitride. When nitrogen is substituted for oxygen in the Cr-Al-O system, the N2p level appears in the energy range between O2p and Cr3d levels. Consequently, the valence band of chromium aluminum oxynitride becomes broader and the band gap becomes smaller than that of chromium aluminum oxide, which is consistent with the photoelectron spectra for the valence band using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS). We expect that this valence band structure of chromium aluminum oxynitride will modify the transmittance slope which is a requirement for photomask application.