Preparation of Titanium Carbide Thin Film Using Plasma Focus Device

In this work, we report titanium carbide (TiC) formation on the stainless steel—304 substrates by using a low energy (2 kJ) Mather-type plasma focus (PF) device. The argon–acetylene admixture (in 3:1 ratio) was used as the filling gas at a pressure of 1 torr. The thin films were deposited with different number of focus deposition shots (5, 15 and 25 shots), at 0° angular position with respect to the anode axis and at constant distance from the anode tip (10 cm). Deposited thin films have been investigated for their structure by X-Ray diffractometry (XRD) and surface morphology by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) analysis. The average size of crystallites (from XRD), crystalline growth of structures (from SEM), and size of grains and surface roughness (from AFM) were investigated, which increase by increasing the number of focus deposition shots.