Understanding nanomechanical and surface ellipsometry of optical F-doped SnO2 thin films by in-line APCVD

Afzaal, M; Yates, HM; Al-Ahmed, A; Ul-Hamid, A; Salhi, B; Ali, M

Abstract

In this paper, a production-type chemical vapour deposition (CVD) is utilized to deposit fluorine
doped tin oxide thin films of different thicknesses and dopant levels. Deposited films showed a
preferred orientation along the (200) plane of a tetragonal structure due to the formation of
halogen rich polar molecules during the process. A holistic approach studying elastic modulus
and hardness of resulting films by a high-throughput atmospheric-pressure CVD process is
described. The hardness values determined lie between 8 - 20 GPa. For a given load, the modulus
generally increased slightly with the thickness. The average elastic recovery for the coatings was
found to be between 45 – 50 %. Refractive index and thickness values derived from the fitted
ellipsometry data were in excellent agreement with independent calculations from transmission
and reflection data.

Citation

Afzaal, M., Yates, H., Al-Ahmed, A., Ul-Hamid, A., Salhi, B., & Ali, M. (2020). Understanding nanomechanical and surface ellipsometry of optical F-doped SnO2 thin films by in-line APCVD. Applied Physics A, 126, 840. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-020-04033-z

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 26, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Oct 8, 2020
• Publication Date: Oct 8, 2020
• Deposit Date: Sep 29, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 8, 2021
• Journal: Applied Physics A: Materials Science and Processing
• Print ISSN: 0947-8396
• Electronic ISSN: 1432-0630
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Volume: 126
• Pages: 840
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-020-04033-z
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-020-04033-z
• Related Public URLs: http://link.springer.com/journal/339
• Additional Information: Access Information : This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Applied Physics A: Materials Science and Processing. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00339-020-04033-z; Projects : CHEOPS