Structural, Morphological and Optical Properties of Nanostructure Nickel Oxide Thin Films on Quartz Substrates Grown by Plasma Oxidation

Effect of plasma oxidation parameters on physical properties of nanocrystalline nickel oxide thin films grown by two-step method: DC sputtering and plasma oxidation

“…In these samples, the microstrain and dislocation density increased with increasing the plasma treatment time while the crystallite size decreased. On the other hand, the average crystallite size of the films calculated from XRD data is found in the range of 29-41 nm, which confirms the presence of nanocrystals in the NiO films prepared in this study [7,24,28]. Based on these results, plasma oxidation can be suitable technique for producing the nanocrystalline NiO films.…”

“…The peaks detected at binding energies of 855.8 eV and 862.1 eV are corresponding to Ni 2p 3/2 and Ni 2p 1/2 , respectively. These peaks suggest the presence of NiO [3,7,9,16]. The peak detected at 529.63 is belonging to O1 s and originates from the oxygen bond of Ni-O-Ni [7].…”

“…The film morphology was examined by atomic force microscopy (AFM, Park Scientific Instrument, Auto probe cp USA) and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM, Hitachi S-4160) which was equipped with an energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) system. The composition of films was evaluated by Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS) using a 2 MeV proton beam of a 3 MV single ended Van de Graff machine [7,28]. The surface chemistry and composition of some NiO films were investigated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) with Al Kα X-ray source (hν = 1486.6 eV).…”

“…In recent years, the preparation and characterization of nanostructure nickel oxide (NiO) have gained considerable attentions of many scientists, due to excellent properties [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. The properties of NiO thin films, which make it suitable for the different applications, are excellent durability, low material cost and wide optical band gap in the range of 3.6 -4 eV, excellent electrical and optical properties .…”

“…NiO films can be fabricated by different physical and chemical deposition techniques such as DC and RF magnetron sputtering [2,6,[11][12][13][14][15], thermal oxidation [16][17][18], chemical deposition [19,20], pulsed laser deposition [9], spray pyrolysis [21] and sol-gel [23]. An alternative method for preparation of NiO films that recently was reported by our research group is plasma oxidation of nickel thin films [7]. The oxidation process of thin metal films using plasma discharge offers many advantages compared with conventional process such as gas oxiding.…”