Effects of Thermal Annealing and Film Thickness on the Structural and Morphological Properties of Titanium Dioxide Films

Abstract

Titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) thin films having different thicknesses of 220, 260, and 300 nm were deposited onto well-cleaned n-type silicon substrates by reactive DC magnetron sputtering and annealed in the range of 200-1000 • C in steps of 200 • C. The effects of thermal annealing and thickness variation on the crystalline quality and surface morphology of the films were investigated by X-ray diffraction and atomic force microscopy measurements. It was found that the film quality and morphology depend on the annealing temperature. TiO 2 films exhibit a grain-like surface morphology. The root-mean-square roughness and grain size on the surface increase as a result of increasing film thickness.

Effect of annealing temperatures on the morphology, optical and electrical properties of TiO2 thin films synthesized by the sol–gel method and deposited on Al/TiO2/SiO2/p-Si

“…It can be seen that the band gap energy decreased with the increasing grain sizes and thickness of TiO 2 thin films due to the increases annealing temperatures as summarized in Table 2. This suggests that the grain sizes increased linearly with thickness (Tayade et al 2007;Çörekçí et al 2011).…”

Effect of TiO2 Film Thickness on the Stability of Au9 Clusters with a CrOx Layer

“…The XRD results show that the TiO2G and TiO2P have the same fraction of anatase after heating, so the total amount of anatase in TiO2G is larger compared to TiO2P (vide supra). Ç örekçi et al noted a similar finding in their study of different thicknesses of TiO2 films heated at different temperatures [19]. The authors reported that the surface roughness of the thicker TiO2 film (300 nm) increased more compared to thinner films (220 and 260 nm) upon heating.…”

“…It was observed that an increase in surface roughness and grain sizes occurred during heating depending on TiO 2 film thicknesses, which also increased with film thickness. This is because increasing temperatures transform TiO 2 from amorphous to anatase and then to rutile [17], and these phase transitions affect the surface morphology of the TiO 2 film, which includes the roughness and crystallinity of the surface [19].…”

Pulsed Laser Deposition as a Tool for the Development of All Solid‐State Microbatteries

“…The annealing can be performed in‐situ or ex‐situ , that is, inside the vacuum chamber immediately after the deposition or afterwards in a separate furnace, respectively. The post‐annealing temperature can influence the stress in the film structure, roughness, grain size, crystallinity and stoichiometry [45,47] . A high oxygen partial pressure and temperature around 500 °C promotes the diffusion of oxygen into the film and a reduction in the number of oxygen vacancies created during the film growth [48] .…”