We have developed low-stress chromium nitride (CrN) films as hardmasks for x-ray absorber etching. The stress in the CrN films is 3 MPa and its distribution (gradient) is less than 10 MPa in a 25x25 mm area. In addition, the CrN film is electrically conductive (1.4 Omega/square). We have fabricated 0.10 mu m line-and-space patterns in 0.4-mu m-thick tantalum germanide using a 75-nm-thick CrN hardmask. The results demonstrate that a sputtered CrN film is an excellent hardmask material for x-ray mask fabrication.