Investigation of structural and optical properties of 100 MeV F7+ ion irradiated Ga10Se90-xAlx thin films

Abstract

Present work focuses on the effect of swift heavy ion (SHI) irradiation of 100 MeV F7+ ions by varying the fluencies in the range of 1 × 1012 to 1 × 1013 ions/cm2 on the morphological, structural and optical properties of polycrystalline thin films of Ga10Se90-xAlx (x = 0, 5). Thin films of ~300 nm thickness were deposited on cleaned Al2O3 substrates by thermal evaporation technique. X-ray diffraction pattern of investigated thin films shows the crystallite growth occurs in hexagonal phase structure for Ga10Se90 and tetragonal phase structure for Ga10Se85Al5. The further structural analysis carried out by Raman spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy verifies the defects or disorder of the investigated material increases after SHI irradiation. The optical parameters absorption coefficient (α), extinction coefficient (K), optical band gap (Eg) and Urbach’s energy (EU) are determined from optical absorption spectra data measured from spectrophotometry in the wavelength range 200–1100 nm. It was found that the values of absorption coefficient and extinction coefficient increase while the value of optical band gap decreases with the increase in ion fluence. This post irradiation change in the optical parameters was interpreted in terms of bond distribution model.