Protective coating materials are commonly grown by physical or chemical vapor deposition (PVD or CVD) techniques on cutting tools. This to improve the service life of the tools during the high temperatures, friction, wear, corrosion and oxidation leading to mechanical and thermal fatigue, during applications such as turning, milling, and drilling. Such coatings have been used in the form of nitrides, oxynitrides, carbides, carbonitrides, borides, boronitrides and oxides, where a lot of comparisons 2 between PVD and CVD have been made. It can be noted that many of the nitride, oxide, and carbide protective hard coatings produced for the engineering and manufacturing industry are highly relevant also for the microelectronics field, e.g., as dielectrics, diffusion barriers, and gate oxides . AlN is one example of such a material used in microelectronic and optoelectronic applications because of its wide bandgap (6.2 eV) , high dielectric constant (∼9) , high electrical resistivity (∼10 11 -10 13 Ωcm) , a good thermal conductivity (2.85 W/Kcm) and piezoelectric properties .