Titanium nitride (TiN) films were deposited onto (111) silicon wafers using an ion beam assisted deposition technique employing an electron cyclotron resonance ion source as a means of ionizing the nitrogen gas. The deposited TiN films consisted predominantly of cubic TiN crystals preferentially oriented in the (200) lattice plane, in addition to a small amount of hexagonal TiN and Ti5Si3 crystals. The growth of the Ti5Si3 crystals, however, was restricted to the case where TiN films were deposited with a large fraction of nitrogen ions. The resistivities of the deposited TiN films, which significantly depended upon the fraction of nitrogen ions in the nitrogen beam, decreased with increasing substrate temperature and film thickness. Furthermore, the resistivities of the deposited TiN films were inversely proportional to the average radius of crystallites. (C) 2003 American Vacuum Society.