Effect of annealing temperature on structural and optical properties of Cr2O3 thin films by PLD

Abstract

In the present work, pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique was applied to a pellet of Chromium Oxide (99.999% pure) with 2.5 cm diameter and 3 mm thickness at a pressure of 5 Tons using a Hydraulic piston. The films were deposited using Nd: YAG laser λ= (1064) nm at 600 mJ and 400 number of shot on a glass substrate, The thickness of the film was (107 nm). Structural and morphological analysis showed that the films started to crystallize at annealing temperature greater than 400 oC. Absorbance and transmittance spectra were recorded in the wavelength range (300-1100) nm before and after annealing. The effects of annealing temperature on absorption coefficient, refractive index, extinction coefficient, real and imaginary parts of dielectric constant were also study. It was found that all these parameters decrease as the annealing temperature increased to 500 °C, while the energy gap after annealing increase from 3.4 eV to 3.85 eV.