Preparation of high-oriented molybdenum thin films using DC reactive magnetronsputtering

Abstract

Since molybdenum (Mo) thin film has been used widely recently, it attracts plenty of attention, like it is a good candidate of back contact material for CuIn[Formula: see text]Ga[Formula: see text]Se[Formula: see text]S[Formula: see text] (CIGSeS) solar cells development; thanks to its more conductive and higher adhesive property. Besides, molybdenum thin film is an ideal material for aluminum nitride (AlN) thin film preparation and attributes to the tiny (−1.0%) lattice mismatch between Mo and AlN. As we know that the quality of Mo thin film is mainly dependent on process conditions, it brings a practical significance to study the influence of process parameters on Mo thin film properties. In this work, various sputtering conditions are employed to explore the feasibility of depositing a layer of molybdenum film with good quality by DC reactive magnetron sputtering. The influence of process parameters such as power, gas flow, substrate temperature and process time on the crystallinity and crystal orientation of Mo thin films is investigated. X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements and atomic force microscope (AFM) are used to characterize the properties and surface roughness, respectively. According to comparative analysis on the results, process parameters are optimized. The full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the rocking curves of the (110) Mo is decreased to 2.7[Formula: see text], and the (110) Mo peaks reached [Formula: see text] counts. The grain size and the surface roughness have been measured as 20 Å and 3.8 nm, respectively, at 200[Formula: see text]C.