Characterization of Crystalline Structure and Morphology of NiO Thin Films

Abstract

We investigated the relation of sputtering powers with structural and morphological properties of nickel oxide (NiO) thin films. NiO thin films were fabricated by using an rf-reactive sputtering method on Si(100) substrates with a Ni target in a partial pressure of oxygen and argon. The films were deposited by various rf-sputtering powers from 100 to 200 W at room temperature. The phases and crystalline structures of the deposited films were investigated by using grazing incident X-ray diffraction (XRD). The thickness and surface morphology of the films were investigated by using a field emission-scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). The different sputtering conditions drastically affected the crystallinity and the surface morphology of NiO thin films. A combined analysis of the data obtained from X-ray diffraction and SEM images demonstrates that the preferred orientation of NiO films tends to grow from (111) to (200) direction as increasing the sputtering power, which can be explained by in terms of the surface energy along the indexing plane in an fcc structure. As increasing the rf power, lattice constants decreased from 4.26 to 4.20 angstrom and samples became high-quality crystals. Under our experimental condition, NiO films prepared at 150 W with 20% partial pressure of oxygen and 7 cm distance from the sample to the target show the best quality of the crystal.