Investigation and development of BN interlayer thin film for application in high-performance electronics

Boron is known as the carbon family sibling. For this reason, it was well-known as white carbon by researchers. The world's 70% boron reserves are located in Turkey. However, as an application area, this material is mostly used in the disinfection area. The material has unique properties and utilization in different areas is reported to the world each passing day. Therefore, in this thesis, BN was coated as a thin film on the conductive ITO and FTO coated glasses. Then, undoped, ZnO and SnO2-doped titanium dioxide (TiO2) thin films were coated on the BN layers. A total of 6 samples were selected for these structures. The main goal of this research is to investigation and evaluation of the electrochromic performance of BN interlayers upon the undoped and doped TiO2 thin films. For this reason, ITO and FTO with different properties were selected as a substrate. BN, undoped and doped TiO2 films are coated with thermionic vacuum arc (TVA) technique. Structural, optical and surface properties of the all prepared thin films were studied via fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR), ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectrophotometer, Filmetrics and atomic force microscope (AFM) measurement devices, respectively. Then, the impact of transmittance (T%), absorption (A), Urbach energy (Eu), optical band gap (Eg), thickness, roughness, reflection (R), and refractive index (n) of the BN interlayers on the undoped and doped TiO2 thin film was investigated. As a result of the structural measurements, TiO2 and BN phases were revealed. The electrochromic properties such as reversibility, coloration efficiency, phototopic contrast ratio and transmittance difference of the prepared structures were calculated and afterward compared. Three electrode configuration and liquid electrolyte (LiClO4-PC) with two different molarities (0.1 and 1M) were used in all electrochromic analyzes. Finally, the electrochromic (EC) performance of the prepared undoped and doped TiO2/BN thin films was compared with the studies available in the literature. As a result, it was determined that the parameters obtained and calculated from electrochemical, surface, and optical measurements of the prepared structures depend on the dopant material, electrolyte molarity as well as the substrate properties.