effect of postdeposition annealing on the structural, electrical, and optical properties of dc magnetron sputtered filmspostdeposition退火对结构的影响、电力和光学特性的直流磁控管气急败坏的电影.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Research Letters in Materials Science Volume 2007, Article ID 95307, 5 pages doi:10.1155/2007/95307 Research Letter Effect of Postdeposition Annealing on the Structural, Electrical, and Optical Properties of DC Magnetron Sputtered Ta2O5 Films S. V. Jagadeesh Chandra,1 P. Sreedhara Reddy,1 G. Mohan Rao,2 and S. Uthanna1 1 Department of Physics, Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati 517502, India 2 Department of Instrumentation, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India Correspondence should be addressed to S. Uthanna, uthanna@rediff Received 12 August 2007; Accepted 5 November 2007 Recommended by Maria Antonietta Loi Thin films of tantalum oxide were formed on quartz and silicon (111) substrates kept at room temperature (303 K) by reactive sputtering of tantalum target in the presence of mixture of oxygen and argon gases. The as-deposited films were annealed in air for an hour in the temperature range 673–873 K. The films were characterized by studying structural, dielectric, electrical, and optical properties. The as-deposited films were amorphous in nature. As the annealing temperature increased to 673 K, the films were transformed into polycrystalline. Electrical characteristics of as-deposited and annealed Ta2 O5 thin films were compared. The thermal annealing reduced the leakage current density and increased the dielectric constant. The optical transmittance of the films increased with the increase of annealing temperature. The as-deposited films showed the optical band gap of 4.38 eV. It increased to 4.44 eV with the increase of annealing temperature to 873 K. The as-deposited films showed the low value (1.89) of refractive index and it increased to 2.15 when annealed at 873 K. The increase of refractive index with annealing temperature was du