Observation of complete oxidation of InN to In2O3 in air at elevated temperatures by using X-ray photoemission spectroscopy

Abstract

We present here an X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) analysis of a polycrystalline InN film on sapphire. The InN was completely oxidized to bixbyite in air after annealing at high temperatures. The analysis of the X-ray diffraction data demonstrated that the oxidation process started around 450 degrees C. The high-resolution XPS data showed the In3d peaks and the N1s main peak located near 396.4 eV for the InN films. After oxidation, the N1s peak had completely disappeared while the In3d peaks had not changed. These results strongly indicate that the oxidation transformed the structure of InN film to In2O3.