Irradiation effect on structural and electrical properties of YMnO3/ITO/glass thin film

Abstract

In this communication, the structural, microstructural and electrical properties of YMnO3/ITO/glass thin films have been thoroughly studied. Moreover, the electrical properties of this film have been studied in the absence of magnetic field and in the vicinity of applied magnetic field of 1 T. In addition to it, the YMnO3/ITO/glass thin films were grown using sophisticated pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique which was further irradiated by 120 MeV Ag+9 ions with different ion fluence of 5 × 1011–5 × 1013 ions/cm2. In order to calculate crystallite size of the film, Scherrer’s formula and W-H plot are plotted. For the investigation of surface morphology, Atomic force microscopy (AFM) has been performed. Variation in electrical properties have been discussed in the context of average grain size, grain boundary density, rms surface roughness, defect density and oxygen vacancies. To understand the dielectric response of pristine and all the irradiated thin films under zero and 1 T applied magnetic fields, universal dielectric response (UDR) model and relaxation model have been fitted. Frequency dependent a.c. conductivity have been fitted by Jonscher’s power law and from its calculation maximum barrier height have been estimated. Average normalized constant (ANC), which provides the grain boundary density, have been analyzed from impedance data.