More recently, zirconium nitride (ZrN) films are getting considerable attentions not just because of its warmer golden color, but its significant performance advantages over TiN films during drilling and corrosion tests.Substrate bias, which governs the ion energy, is a very important parameter for the deposition of films.In this study, zirconium nitride thin films were fabricated using arc ion plating under different negative substrate biases.The effects of substrate bias on ZrN films fabricated using arc ion plating is investigated by applying different negative substrate biases.The phase structure, composition, and surface morphology of ZrN films, with respect to substrate bias, were studied by means of X-ray diffraction, electron probe microanalyzer, and FE-SEM.Cubic ZrN and hexegenol Zr phases were formed in the films.The competition between surface energy and strain energy make the preferred orientation of ZrN films change from (111) to (200) and then back to highly (111) preferred orientation as a function of substrate bias.With the increase of bias voltage, the crystallite size of ZrN films reduces from 30nm to 15nm.Meanwhile, film microstructure evolves from an apparent columnar structure to a highly dense one, indicating that ion bombardment enhanced by substrate bias can suppress columnar growth in ZrN films.Deposition rate and Zr/N atomic ratio increase with bias voltage and reach the maximum at-50V, then show a decline trend when bias voltage increases further.