Abstract
Zirconium oxide thin films were grown successfully by thermal annealing of zirconium thin films deposited on quartz and silicon substrates by direct current magnetron sputtering technique. The structural and optical properties in relation to thermal annealing times were investigated. The X-ray diffraction patterns revealed that structure of films changes from amorphous to crystalline by increase of annealing times in range 60–240 min. The composition of films was determined by Rutherford back scattering spectroscopy. Atomic force microscopy results exhibited that surface morphology and roughness of films depend on the annealing time. The refractive index of the films was calculated using Swanepoel’s method. The optical band gap energy of annealed films decreased from 5.50 to 5.34 eV with increasing thermal annealing time.
Highlights
Zirconia thin films (ZrO2) are one of the transition-metal oxides with outstanding physical, optical and chemical properties [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14] including high hardness, low electrical conductivity, high melting point, good thermodynamic stability in contact with silicon, transparency in the visible and near-infrared region, high refractive index, high dielectric constant and large optical band gap [2, 10, 11].Through having such properties ZrO2 thin films have attracted a lot of attention and applied in diverse field such as, optical filters [5], memory device [6], it is used as a material to store capacitors [7] in dynamic random access memories
In this investigation nanocrystalline zirconia thin films were prepared by thermal annealing of zirconium (Zr) thin films grown on silicon and quartz substrates by DC magnetron sputtering
The tetragonal ZrO2 phases can be observed in annealing times in range120-240 min due to the oxidation of zirconium films after thermal annealing in oxygen atmosphere
Summary
Zirconia thin films (ZrO2) are one of the transition-metal oxides with outstanding physical, optical and chemical properties [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14] including high hardness, low electrical conductivity, high melting point, good thermodynamic stability in contact with silicon, transparency in the visible and near-infrared region, high refractive index, high dielectric constant and large optical band gap [2, 10, 11].Through having such properties ZrO2 thin films have attracted a lot of attention and applied in diverse field such as, optical filters [5], memory device [6], it is used as a material to store capacitors [7] in dynamic random access memories. Rebib et al [11] have studied the structural and optical properties of zirconia thin films deposited by sputtering a ZrO2 target under an argon–oxygen gas mixture and different total gas pressures.
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