Research Information System
6th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON GLOBAL PRACTICE OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY SCIENTIFIC STUDIES, Lisbon, Portugal, 9 - 16 April 2024, vol.1, pp.1800-1812, (Full Text)
This study is about the application of reactive NiO thin film coating on glass substrate by DC
Magnetron Sputtering method. NiO finds application in ferromagnetic materials, p-type
transparent conductive film, electrochromic imaging devices and chemical sensors as a
functional sensor layer. Sputtering is a physical vapor deposition method used to deposit thin
films. This method involves sputtering material from a “target” one of which is the source, onto
a “substrate” such as glass. Sputtering is widely used in the semiconductor industry to deposit
thin films of various materials in integrated circuit processing. For optical applications, thin
anti-reflective coatings are also deposited on glass by sputtering. One of the oldest commercial
applications of the sputtering method is in the production of computer hard disks. Due to the
low substrate temperatures used, sputtering is an ideal method to deposit contact metals in thin-
film transistor fabrication. In reactive sputtering, particles sputtered from the target material
(Ni) undergo a chemical reaction aimed at the deposition of a film of different composition on
a specific substrate (glass). The chemical reaction that the particles are exposed to occurs with
a reactive gas such as oxygen supplied to the sputtering chamber, resulting in the production of
oxide films. The introduction of an additional element in the method, namely reactive gas, has
a significant impact on the desired thin film deposition and makes it difficult to find ideal
operating points. In this way, the vast majority of reactive sputtering processes are characterized
by a hysteresis-like behavior, thus requiring appropriate control of the additional inert gas,
pressure and temperature parameters involved. The existence of many parameters controlling
thin film deposition by reactive sputtering makes this a complex process, but also provides a
large degree of control over the growth and microstructure of the resulting thin film. In this
study, Oxygen (reactive gas) mixed with Argon gas in different proportions was used to produce
NiO thin film in the presence of high purity Ni target as the target. The characterization of NiO
thin films produced by keeping the pressure, temperature and plasma current limit constant was
optimized by measuring optical transmittance, reflectance, coating thickness and conductivity.