Rutile TiO2 thin films grown by reactive high power impulse magnetron sputtering

Journal article, 2013

Thin TiO 2 films were grown on Si(001) substrates by reactive dc magnetron sputtering (dcMS) and high power impulse magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS) at temperatures ranging from 300 to 700 C.Optical and structural properties of films were compared both before and after post-annealing using scanning electron microscopy, low angle X-ray reflection (XRR), grazing inc idence X-ray diffractometry and spectroscopic ellipsometry.Both dcMS- and HiPIMS-grown films reveal polycrystalline rutile TiO 2 , even prior to post-annealing.The HiPIMS-grown films exhibit significantly larger grains compared to that of dcMC-grown films, approaching 100% of the film thickness for films grown at 700 C.In addition, the XRR surface roughness of HiPIMS-grown films was significantly lower than that of dcMS-grown films over the whole temperature range 300-700 C.Dispersion curves could only be obtained for the HiPIMS-grown films, which were shown to have a refractive index in the range of 2.7-2.85 at 500 nm.The results show that thin, rutile TiO 2 films, with high refractive index, can be obtained by HiPIMS at relatively low growth temperatures, without post-annealing.Furthermore, these films are smoother and show better optical characteristics than their dcMS-grown counterparts.© 2013 Elsevier B.V.All rights reserved.