Influence of the N 2 on TiN Thin Film Grown by PLD C. González-Valezuela*, A. Duarte Moller*, W. De la Cruz**, F. Castillón-Barraza**, J. A. Díaz**, L. Cota Araiza**. *Centro de Investigación en Materiales Avanzados S.C., Miguel de Cervantes 120, Complejo Industrial Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Chih. 31109, México **Centro de Ciencias de la Materia Condensada, UNAM. Km.107 carretera Tijuana-Ensenada. Ensenada, B. C. México Titanium Nitride thin films at different N 2 pressures were obtained by the PLD technique [1] and characterized using the transmission EXELFS [2] and EXAS techniques [3]. The EXELFS experiments were performed in a CM 200 transmission electron microscope with a GATAN 766 PEELS attachment. A primary energy of 200 keV and a spot size of 440 nm with an average acquisition time of 5 min were used. The atomic distribution obtained using the EXELFS and EXAFS formalism was corrected with the respective phase shifts. Pulsed Laser Ablation in presence of an N 2 environment was the method for growing. The characterization techniques were X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES) and Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (EELS). These techniques were applied in-situ. A vacuum chamber MEB, RIBER CAMECA MAC3 equipped with XPS and AES and a pulsed laser LAMBDA PHYSIK of a wave length of 248 nm and 30 ns of duration and pulsed adjustable frequency were used for deposition. Target of Titanium with 99.9% purity and a substrate of Si(1 1 1) and an atmosphere of molecular Nitrogen at different pressures were also used. The substrate surface is of 1 in 2 . The vacuum in the chamber was of 3.5 X 10 -8 Torr in average. Each one of the samples had a different partial pressure of N 2. The laser operated at 16.1 kV and energy in each pulse of 150 mJ. Deposition time for each sample was of 1 hr. at room temperature. For each sample, a XPS of low resolution and high resolution, AES and for EELS near the cero loss peak were obtained. Figure 1 displays the XPS spectra of sub-shells 2p 1/2 and 2p 3/2 of Ti. Here (a) and (b) indicate the region where a significant progressive change is denoted. It obeys to a spectra superposition for Ti in two or more different binding states and as the amount of N is increasing, the Ti rises a place where does not accepts more N and in 70 mtorr we have only one kind of TiN x . In relation to this, the C N /C Ti is changing from 0.9 to 1.30. Also very significant changes in color going appearing in the different deposition conditions. These colors are from a pale gold in 5 mTorr samples going to a golden in 20 mTorr and in the final sample is a dark purple. XAS experiments were carried out in the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Light, SSRL, in the beam line 2-3, using a Lyttle detector. Typical run of 30 minutes were used on each experiment. Data processing was performed using the WinXAS program. In order to obtain a good EXAFS fit, the FEFF 8.0 software was used. Figure 2 shows the one to one comparison among the radial distribution function obtained by applying the EXELFS and EXAFS procedure to the TiN sample. Microsc Microanal 10(Suppl 2), 2004 Copyright 2004 Microscopy Society of America DOI: 10.1017/S1431927604886173 638