Niobium Pentoxide thin films employ simple colloidal suspension at low preparation temperature

¹ Laser Science Branch, University of Technology, 10066 Baghdad, Iraq
² Semiconductor Photonics & Integrated Lightwave Systems (SPILS), School of Microelectronic Engineering, University Malaysia Perlis, Pauh Putra Campus, Arau 02600 Malaysia

^* Corresponding author: mkabood@gmail.com

Published online: 22 November 2017

Abstract

In this work a nano-colloidal suspension is used to prepare Nb₂O₅ thin films. The effect of different substrates on structural properties of niobium pentoxide thin film deposited by spin coating technique on silicon and quartz substrates are presented. We observed that the obtained structure is monocline in both substrates. The diffraction peaks in both substrates ensured the successful formation of Nb₂O₅ thin films with a clear polymorphous structure. However, the structure became more crystalline with additional distinguished peaks on silicon substrate comparing to quartz substrate. The extracted structural parameters from X-Ray diffraction show that the grain size of the thin films on quartz is smaller than silicon with the values of 16.47 nm and 20.98 nm respectively. The stress measurement records the values of 0.19 and 0.00719 for the thin films deposited on silicon and quartz substrates respectively. Effects of film thickness depicted increment in the absorbance and reduction in the band gap. Energy gaps of 2.7, 2.58 and, 2.5 eV are measured as a result of increasing the film thicknesses of 325, 420 and 450 nm respectively.