Effect of titanium ion energy on surface structure during the amorphous titanium dioxide film deposition

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the influences of the surface structure formation mechanism and the film properties on the incident titanium ion energy in the amorphous TiO2 thin film deposition process. The results show that the surface roughness of the film is reduced by increasing the energy of the incident titanium ions, and then the optical scattering loss of the film surface will decrease. It is also found that when the incident ion energy is increased, the film growth pattern changes from the “island-like” growth to the “layer-like” growth, and the surface diffusion coefficient of ions near the incident point is also significantly increased, which is conducive to the formation of more smooth film surface.