Annealing Effect on the Growth of Nanostructured TiO2 Thin Films by Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD)

Abstract

In this work, Nanostructured TiO2 thin films were grown by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique on glass substrates at 300 °C. TiO2 thin films were then annealed at 400-600 °C in air for a period of 2 hours. Effect of annealing on the structure, morphology and optical properties were studied. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) measurements confirmed that the films grown by this technique have good crystalline tetragonal mixed anatase and rutile phase structure and homogeneous surface. The study also reveals that the RMS value of thin films roughness increased with increasing annealing temperature .The optical properties of the films were studied by UV-VIS spectrophotometer. The optical transmission results shows that the transmission over than ~65% which decrease with the increasing of annealing temperatures. The allowed indirect optical band gap of the films was estimated to be in the range from 3.49 to 3.1 eV. The allowed direct band gap was found to decrease from 3.74 to 3.55 eV with the increase of annealing temperature. The refractive index of the films was found from 2.27 -2.98 at 550nm. The extinction coefficient increase with annealing temperature.