Understanding nanomechanical and surface ellipsometry of optical F-doped SnO 2 thin films by in-line APCVD
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Understanding nanomechanical and surface ellipsometry of optical F‑doped SnO2 thin films by in‑line APCVD Mohammad Afzaal1 · Heather M. Yates2 · Amir Al‑Ahmed3 · Anwar Ul‑Hamid4 · Billel Salhi5 · Murad Ali6 Received: 23 May 2020 / Accepted: 28 September 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract In this paper, a production-type chemical vapour deposition (CVD) is utilized to deposit fluorine doped tin oxide thin films of different thicknesses and dopant levels. Deposited films showed a preferred orientation along the (200) plane of a tetragonal structure due to the formation of halogen rich polar molecules during the process. A holistic approach studying elastic modulus and hardness of resulting films by a high-throughput atmospheric-pressure CVD process is described. The hardness values determined lie between 8 and 20 GPa. For a given load, the modulus generally increased slightly with the thickness. The average elastic recovery for the coatings was found to be between 45 and 50%. Refractive index and thickness values derived from the fitted ellipsometry data were in excellent agreement with independent calculations from transmission and reflection data. Keywords Chemical vapor deposition · Tin oxide · Refractive index · Nanoindentation · Ellipsometer
1 Introduction
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-020-04033-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Mohammad Afzaal [email protected] 1
Maths and Natural Sciences Division, Higher Colleges of Technology, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
2
Materials and Physics Research Centre, University of Salford, Manchester M5 4WT, UK
3
Center of Research Excellence in Renewable Energy, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
4
Center for Engineering Research, Research Institute, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
5
Center of Research Excellence in Desalination and Water Treatment, Research Institute, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
6
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Main Campus, 127788 Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) thin films have become a major choice of transparent conducting oxide (TCO) material from the point of both energy capture and conservation. These combine high transparency in the visible region, increased electrical conductivity, along with reduced material costs, and improved thermal and chemical stabilities over TCO’s such as indium tin oxide [1–7]. The improved stabilities of FTO’s, over other TCO’s such as indium tin oxide, are related to the large grain sizes at high deposition temperatures along with formation of ionic Sn-F bonds. These attributes have provided much impetus into the use of FTO substrates for diverse technologies such as photovoltaic applic
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