The investigation of microstructures of zirconium dioxide thin films grown by sputtering technique

The Investigation of Microstructures of Zirconium Dioxide Thin Films Grown by Sputtering Technique In this thesis, ZrO2 thin films with different thicknesses (400 nm, 500 nm, 600 nm) were grown by Reactive RF magnetron sputtering technique, on n-type Silicon (100) substrate at 200 oC applying 125 W power rating. The micro structural analyses of thin films were done by Scanning Electron Microscope and it was observed that the films were grown successfully in the form of big grains formed by the accumulation of small particles. It was seen that the size of grains changed with the increase of film thickness. Energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy was used to determine the chemical compositions of samples. The crystal structures of ZrO2 samples were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique. It was identified that the crystal structures of ZrO2-1 and ZrO2-2 samples were monoclinic but the crystal structure of ZrO2-3 sample presented both monoclinic phase and tetragonal phase. In addition, according to I-V measurements, which were done to investigate the electrical properties of samples, ideality factor (n) and barrier height (?b) of each samples were calculated and it was observed that the samples demonstrated (schottky diode) properties. Key Words: ZrO2 thin films, Reactive RF Sputtering, Microstructure, Electron microscopy