AFM Study of Surface Morphology of Aluminum Nitride Thin Films

1995 ◽  
Vol 388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoshihisa Watanabe ◽  
Yoshikazu Nakamura ◽  
Shigekazu Hirayama ◽  
Yuusaku Naota

AbstractAluminum nitride (AlN) thin films have been synthesized by ion-beam assisted deposition method. Film deposition has been performed on the substrates of silicon single crystal, soda-lime glass and alumin A. the influence of the substrate roughness on the film roughness is studied. the substrate temperature has been kept at room temperature and 473K and the kinetic energy of the incident nitrogen ion beam and the deposition rate have been fixed to 0.5 keV and 0.07 nm/s, respectively. the microstructure of the synthesized films has been examined by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and the surface morphology has been observed by atomic force microscopy(AFM). IN the XRD patterns of films synthesized at both room temperature and 473K, the diffraction line indicating the alN (10*0) can be discerned and the broad peak composed of two lines indicating the a1N (00*2) and a1N (10*1) planes is also observed. aFM observations for 100 nm films reveal that (1) the surface of the films synthesized on the silicon single crystal and soda-lime glass substrates is uniform and smooth on the nanometer scale, (2) the average roughness of the films synthesized on the alumina substrate is similar to that of the substrate, suggesting the evaluation of the average roughness of the film itself is difficult in the case of the rough substrate, and (3) the average roughness increases with increasing the substrate temperature.

2013 ◽  
Vol 291-294 ◽  
pp. 703-707
Author(s):  
Gui Shan Liu ◽  
Hao Na Li ◽  
Xiao Yue Shen ◽  
Zhi Qiang Hu ◽  
Hong Shun Hao

CIGS thin films were deposited on soda lime glass by one-step magnetron sputtering using a single quaternary-CIGS target in stoichiometric proportions. The influences of substrate temperature on the structural, optical, and electrical properties of Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) thin films were investigated. The phase structure of CIGS thin films was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD). The morphology and thickness of CIGS thin films were observed by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The absorption coefficient of CIGS thin films was measured by Ultraviolet-visible Spectrophotometer. Four-point probe method was used to test the resistivity of CIGS thin films. Based on the results of characterization, the increase in crystallite size of CIGS was found to be significantly noticeable with increasing substrate temperature. UV-vis measurement analysis suggested that CIGS thin films deposited at different substrate temperatures had high absorption coefficient (~104 cm-1) and optical band gap (1.07-1.23 eV). The substrate temperature dependence of the resistivity of the films indicated that the resistivity of the films fall to about 0.5 Ω۰cm as the substrate glass was heated up to 300 °C.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1603 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yong Yan ◽  
Shasha Li ◽  
Zhou Yu ◽  
Yong Zhang ◽  
Yong Zhao

ABSTRACTCu2ZnSnSe4 films were deposited on soda lime glass substrates at room temperature by one-step radio frequency magnetron-sputtering process. The effect of sputtering power on the properties of one-step deposited Cu2ZnSnSe4 thin films has been investigated. The deposited films might be suitable for the absorber layers in the solar cells. The chemical composition and the preferred orientation of the films can be optimized by the sputtering power.


2001 ◽  
Vol 697 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hisayuki Suematsu ◽  
Tsuyoshi Saikusa ◽  
Tsuneo Suzuki ◽  
Weihua Jiang ◽  
Kiyoshi Yatsui

AbstractThin films of titanium iron (TiFe) were prepared by a pulsed ion-beam evaporation (IBE) method. A pulsed ion beam of proton accelerated at 1 MV (peak) with a pulse width of 50 ns and a current of 70 kA was focused on TiFe alloy targets. Soda lime glass substrates were placed in front of the targets. Phases in the thin films were identified by X-ray diffraction (XRD). XRD results revealed that the thin films deposited on the glass substrates consist of a TiFe phase. Crystallized Ti-Fe thin films without oxides were successfully obtained. Surface roughness of the thin film was 0.16 m m.


2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (5) ◽  
pp. 1006-1012
Author(s):  
Ali H A Jalaukhan ◽  
Mustafa M A Hussein

Fullerene thin films of about 200 nm thicknesses have been deposited by thermal evaporation method on soda lime glass at substrate temperature 303 and 403K under pressure about 10-5 mbar. This study concentrated on the influence of substrate temperature on the optical properties of C60 thin films within the visible range. Optical characterization has been carried out at room temperature using the absorption spectra, at normal incidence, in range (200-900) nm. The absorption and extinction coefficients of the samples have been evaluated according to the variation in the UV- Visible spectrum. Increasing substrate temperature causes decreasing in optical band gap energy, for direct allowed transitions, and slightly changing in refractive index. This incident was due to the reducing of interatomic intervals, which may be correlating a decrease in the amplitude of atomic vibrations around their equilibrium sites.


2002 ◽  
Vol 721 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Kuppusami ◽  
K. Diesner ◽  
I. Sieber ◽  
K. Ellmer

AbstractSputtering of aluminium doped zinc oxide thin films from a ceramic ZnO:Al target requires a controlled addition of oxygen to the sputtering atmosphere in order to obtain films with low resistivity and high transparency. In this paper the influence of the oxygen addition and of the substrate temperature on the structural, morphological and electrical properties of ZnO:Al films is investigated. The oxygen addition leads to a minimum resistivity when the oxygen content during sputtering is 0.2%. This small amount of oxygen not only improves the transparency of the films, it also induces to a significant grain growth as revealed by scanning electron microscopy. A further increase of the oxygen content leads to highly resistive films, due to a complete oxidation of the dopant Al. As expected, higher substrate temperatures from about 373 to 673 K improve the of crystallinity and hence the resistivity. The lowest resistivity achieved was about 1.2.10-3 Ωcm. At still higher temperatures the resistivity increases which seems to be due to an outdiffusion of sodium into the ZnO:Al films from the soda lime glass, compensating part of the donors.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 3879-3887
Author(s):  
Praveen Tanwar ◽  
A. K. Panwar ◽  
Sukhvir Singh ◽  
A. K. Srivastava

As a key type of promising thermoelectric (TE) material p-type Tin Telluride (SnTe) vacuum evaporated thin films synthesized at room temperature (RT) on a glass substrate, report a significant enhancement in the figure of merit (ZT) value. The thicknesses of the nanostructured thin films were kept about 145 nm and 275 nm. High-resolution X-ray diffraction (HRXRD) outlines the polycrystalline nature in both thin films. Surface morphology of these films is composed of grains of variable sizes as elucidated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). This observation is further confirmed by atomic force microscopy (AFM) wherein the average roughness, surface skewness, and surface kurtosis parameters are used to analyze the surface morphology. Local microstructural features and crystalline structure have been confirmed from High-resolution transmission electron microscope (HRTEM) and the selected area electron diffraction (SAED) pattern, respectively. Four probes method was used to determine electrical measurements which confirm that the thin films have semi-metallic nature. Thermoelectric measurements carried out on these films resulted that the figure of merit increases as the thickness of the film increases. The maximum ZT value of ˜1.02 is obtained at room temperature for the thin film of thickness 275 nm.


Author(s):  
Humaira Latif ◽  
Rehana Zia ◽  
Muneeb Irshad ◽  
Huma Latif

Thin films of ZnxCd1-xS (x=0.2, 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8) were deposited on cleaned soda lime glass substrates at room temperature by thermal evaporation technique, having source current 50-65 Ampere, chamber pressure 10-5Torr and deposition rate 0.4 nm/sec. These conditions were same for all the thin films having different zinc concentrations. UV-VIS Spectrophotometry was used to study the optical properties of thin films of ZnxCd1-xS in room temperature. XRD was used to study the structure of the thin films of ZnxCd1-xS having various composition of „x‟. UV-VIS studies revealed that as the concentration of zinc content increases, transmission spectra shift towards the shorter wavelength region from (575-526)nm, the percent transmittance was increased in the visible range with the increase of zinc content, absorption edges and absorption coefficient spectra also shift towards the shorter wavelength and hence the direct band gap energy varied non-linearly from 2.55ev to 2.84ev.It was also found that optical conductivity increases with photon energy and thin film of Zn0.4Cd0.6S has high optical conductivity as compared to other value of „x‟. The reflectance and optical constants such as the extinction coefficient and refractive index were also found to depend upon the zinc concentration in the films. XRD studies showed that all the thin films of ZnxCd1-xS (x= 0.2, 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8) had a strong peak in between the diffraction angle 26.60- 31.70, which confirmed that all the thin films exhibited the wurtzite structure with a preferential orientation of (002) plane. It was also found that lattice constants, inters planer spacing, volume and grain size decreases except for Zn0.4Cd0.6S thin film which had high crystallinity as compared to the other composition of the zinc content.


MRS Advances ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (62) ◽  
pp. 3859-3864
Author(s):  
Erick Velázquez Lozada ◽  
Tetyana Torchynska ◽  
Gabriela M. Camacho González ◽  
Luis Castañeda

The continuous interest in the synthesis and properties study of materials has permitted the development of semiconductor oxides. Zinc oxide (ZnO) with hexagonal wurzite structure is a wide band gap n-type semiconductor and interesting material over a wide range. Chemically sprayed aluminium-doped zinc oxide thin films (ZnO:Al) were deposited on soda-lime glass substrates starting from zinc pentanedionate and aluminium pentanedionate. The influence of both the dopant concentration in the starting solution and the substrate temperature on the composition, morphology, and transport properties of the ZnO:Al thin films were studied. The structure of all the ZnO:Al thin films was polycrystalline, and variation in the preferential growth with the aluminium content in the solution was observed: from an initial (002) growth in films with low Al content, switching to a predominance of (101) planes for heavily dopant regime. The crystallite size was found to decrease with doping concentration and range from 33 to 20 nm. First-order Raman scattering from ZnO:Al, all having the wurtzite structure . The assignments of the E2 mode in ZnO:Al differ from previous investigations. The film composition and the dopant concentration were determined by Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES); these results showed that the films are almost stoichiometric ZnO. The optimum deposition conditions leading to conductive and transparent ZnO:Al thin films were also found. In this way a resistivity of 0.03 Ω-cm with a (002) preferential growth, were obtained in optimized ZnO:Al thin films.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samia Ahmed Nadi ◽  
Puvaneswaran Chelvanathan ◽  
Zaihasraf Zakaria ◽  
Mohammad Mezbaul Alam ◽  
Zeid A. Alothman ◽  
...  

Cu2ZnSnS4(CZTS) thin films were deposited on top of Molybdenum (Mo) coated soda lime glass (SLG) substrates using a single target rf magnetron sputtering technique. The sputtering parameters such as base pressure, working pressure, rf power, argon (Ar) gas flow rate, and deposition time were kept consistent throughout the experiment. The effect of different substrate temperatures, for example, room temperature (RT), 300°C, 350°C, 370°C, 400°C, and 450°C, was analyzed by studying their structural, electrical, and optical properties. As-sputtered films were then annealed at 460°C. X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurement revealed the structure to be kesterite with peak of (112) plane in both annealed and as-sputtered CZTS thin films. The crystallinity of the films improved with the increasing substrate temperature until 370°C. Secondary phases of MoS2,CuxMoSx,CuxSnSx,CuxS, and Cu6MoSnS8(hemusite) were also observed in the annealed CZTS films. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) shows crystallite size of deposited CZTS thin film to be proportionally related to deposition temperature. The highest surface roughness of 67.318 nm is observed by atomic force microscopy (AFM). The conductivity type of the films was found to be p-type by Hall effect measurement system.


2013 ◽  
Vol 1507 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryosuke Yamauchi ◽  
Geng Tan ◽  
Daishi Shiojiri ◽  
Nobuo Tsuchimine ◽  
Koji Koyama ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTWe examined the influence of momentary annealing on the nanoscale surface morphology of NiO(111) epitaxial thin films deposited on atomically stepped sapphire (0001) substrates at room temperature in O2 at 1.3 × 10−3 and 1.3 × 10−6 Pa using a pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique. The NiO films have atomically flat surfaces (RMS roughness: approximately 0.1–0.2 nm) reflecting the step-and-terrace structures of the substrates, regardless of the O2 deposition pressure. After rapid thermal annealing (RTA) of the NiO(111) epitaxial film deposited at 1.3 × 10−3 Pa O2, a periodic straight nanogroove array related to the atomic steps of the substrate was formed on the film surface for 60 s. In contrast, the fabrication of a transient state in the nanogroove array formation was achieved with RTA of less than 1 s. However, when the O2 atmosphere during PLD was 1.3 × 10−6 Pa, random crystal growth was observed and resulted in a disordered rough surface nanostructure after RTA.


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