Structural characterization of polycrystalline Sb2O3 thin films prepared by thermal vacuum evaporation technique

Antimony trioxide (Sb2O3) thin films were prepared by conventional thermal vacuum evaporation technique. Cleaned microscope glass substrates were used. The substrate temperature was varied in the range 300-573 K. X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) were performed on the study of Sb2O3 thin films. The X-ray and electron diffraction analysis revealed that the Sb2O3 thin films were polycrystalline cubic structure phase with lattice parameter around a = 11.1400 Angstrom. The most preferential orientation is along (2 2 2) planes for all deposition films. The lattice parameter, grain size and microstrain in the films were calculated by X-ray patterns and correlated with substrate temperature. The grain size distributions were made from SEM micrograph. For all samples the fitted lognormal distribution is in good agreement with the histogram distribution in the whole grain size range. The mean grain size was found to increase from 46.48 to 95.56 nm when the substrate temperature was increased from 300 to 573 K. The surface topography of the Sb2O3 thin films was investigated by AFM. The roughness parameters obtained by this study was found to increase when the substrate temperature increases from 300 to 573 K. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.