General analysis of IBAD produced oxide thin films

Antonio L. C. Bernardo e Jos F. D. Chubaci

Institute of physics /University of So Paulo

antonio.bernardo@usp.br

Goals
The main goal is to prepare and analyse thin
films with the desired optical properties using
Ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD), in order
to better understand the synthesis mechanism
and to master the IBAD system and the
experimental technique.

Methods and Procedures

The IBAD system consists of an ion beam
source and an electron beam evaporator,
adapted to a deposition chamber. The
deposition chamber is kept in a vacuum state
by a mechanical and a cryogenic pump. We
deposited aluminium oxide (Al2O3) assisted by
a beam of argon ions in a silicon substrate.
A variety of films was synthesised, differing
among each other in the parameters
energy and quantity of Argon atoms. The
substrate was kept in room temperature.
To analyse the samples we used X-ray
diffraction (XRD), Reflectance
measurements, Atomic force microscopy
(AFM) and Rutherford backscattering
(RBS).
Results
The figure 1 shows the normalized reflectance
curves used to obtain the films band-gap. Using
Tauc method [2] we can conclude that the
samples band-gap are spread from 2.4 to 3.5
eV. The XRD profile shows the amorphous
nature of the films.
Figure 1: band gap Tauc analysis from
reflectance profile.
Conclusions
The XRD shows that films deposited with
energies up to 600eV and room temperature
have no presence of crystals. The reflectance
measurements were used to define the band-
gap. The RBS shows that the ion beam affects
the composition due to a preferential sputtering,
but is impossible to estimate a depth profile due
to the low resolution. From the AFM we
obtained rugosity information and how it varies
in function of the ion beam energy.
Bibliographical References
[1] Er3+ and Si luminescence of atomic layer
deposited r-doped Al2O3 thin films on
Si(100)Sci. Tech. 23, 137-141 (2005)
[2] Band gap determination in thick films from
reflectance measurements. Optical Material
115-119(1999).