Core-level XPS spectra of the chemical states and bonding of the Al, Ti, N, and O atoms in the films were recorded and studied. For more accurate analysis of the chemical bonding status, such as metal nitrides and possible metal oxide in the films, all narrow scans were deconvoluted as illustrated by the selected sample 4 shown in Fig. . A key consideration involves understanding the nature of the oxygen impurities in the films and their potential chemical interactions with Al, Ti and N. High resolution XPS analysis of the Al 2p, Ti 2p and N 1s peaks provided insights into these bonding characteristics. Al 2p regions in the spectra of all films showed symmetrical peaks indicating a clean and almost full Al-N character assigned at 74.1-74.3 eV. As shown in Fig. ) mainly Al-N bonds and negligible Al-N-O (which is otherwise expected at around 75.4 eV) bonds were observed. On the contrary, deconvolution of the Ti 2p spectrum, shown in Fig. ), gives rise to four peaks or two doublets, due to spin-orbit splitting, that were identified as corresponding to Ti-N (2p3/2 = 455.4 eV and 2p1/2 = 460.9 eV) and Ti-O-N (2p3/2 = 457.3 -457.4 eV and 2p1/2 = 462.9 -463.4 eV). The Ti-N concentration i.e., peak area is lower than the Ti-O-N concentration on the film surface revealing that Ti is exhibiting more oxide character than the nitride contribution. This is understandable considering TDMAT's high affinity for moisture and oxygen, as will be discussed later. Three subpeaks were used in fitting the N 1s peak, observed from the pure N-Al / N-Ti at a binding energy of 396.9 eV while other subpeaks observed at higher binding energies were assigned to the three component titanium oxynitride system (N-Ti-O) and the ignorable oxynitride component of Al (N-Al-O) at 397.9