Influence of the cation nature of high sulfur content oxysulfide thin films MOySz (M=W, Ti) studied by XPS

The present paper reports the XPS study of different high sulfur content amorphous oxysulfides thin films MOySz (M = W, Ti), prepared by radio frequency magnetron sputtering in a pure argon or mixed oxygen/argon plasma. Two types of thin layers are analyzed in this work, synthesized with an oxygen partial pressure equal to 0 and 2 x 10(-4) Pa. On the basis of both core peaks and valence bands, several types of sulfur ions were observed and revealed the specific character of such amorphous layers. In order to precise the common features and the differences as a function of the nature of the metal atom, a comparison of the XPS data for the two kinds of thin films has been done. The results are also commented with respect to theoretical calculations (FP-LAPW-code WIEN97) undertaken on crystallized reference compounds. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.