The plasma-enhanced metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (PEMOCVD) was used to prepare palladium–based thin films starting with palladium (II) acetylacetonate precursor (Pd(acac)2) mixed with argon (carrier gas). To characterize chemical structure and morphology of deposited films Raman spectroscopy and electron diffraction techniques were used. The energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis (EDX) was applied to specify composition of films. The film thickness was estimated by ellipsometric measurements.
The obtained results show that the films have various composition depending on deposition parameters. It has been found that the thermal decomposition at 623 K of the films leads to the formation of fine 5 nm–10 nm size palladium nanoparticles, to which the catalytic activity is attributed.
A series of pure and copper-doped cobalt oxide films was prepared by plasma-enhanced metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (PEMOCVD). The effect of Cu-doping on the chemical structure and morphology of the deposited films was investigated. Raman and FTIR spectroscopies were used to characterize the chemical structure and morphology of the produced films. The bulk composition and homogeneity of the samples were investigated by energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis (EDX), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was employed to assess the surface chemical composition of pure and doped materials. The obtained results permit to affirm that the PEMOCVD technique is a simple, versatile and efficient method for providing homogeneous layers of cobalt oxides with a different content of copper. It has been found that pure cobalt oxide films mainly contain Co 3 O 4 in the form of nanoclusters whereas the films doped with Cu are much more complex, and CoO x (also Co 3 O 4), mixed Co-Cu oxides and CuO x nanoclusters are detected in them. Preliminary catalytical tests show that Cu-doped cobalt oxide films allow to initiate catalytic combustion of n-hexane at a lower temperature compared to the pure cobalt oxide (Co 3 O 4) films. From what has been stated above, the plasma-deposited thin films of Cu-doped cobalt oxides pave the way towards a new class of nanomaterials with interesting catalytic properties.
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