Electronic and bonding structures of B-C-N thin films investigated by x-ray absorption and photoemission spectroscopy

X-ray absorption near-edge structure ~XANES! and valence-band photoelectron spectroscopy ~PES! were used to investigate the electronic and bonding structures of B-C-N thin films. The intensities of the sp-bonded features in the C K-edge XANES spectra are found to generally decrease as the C concentration increases, whereas the intensities of the sp-bonded features in the spectra of N K-edge XANES increase with the N concentration. The decrease of the intensities of the sp-bonded features in the C and N K-edges XANES spectra correlates with the increase of the C/B and N/B concentration ratios and the increase of Young’s modulus. Valence-band PES spectra are found to be insensitive to the variations of the B and C concentrations in B-C-N compounds © 2004 American Institute of Physics. @DOI: 10.1063/1.1759392#