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Thermal decomposition and fractal properties of sputter-deposited platinum oxide thin films

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Abstract

Porous platinum thin films were prepared by thermal decomposition at temperatures from 25 to 675 °C of platinum oxide films deposited by a pulsed reactive sputtering technique. The samples’ chemistry and structure were investigated by x-ray diffraction (XRD), x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and x-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES), showing that the decomposition of the oxide begins as low as 400 °C and follows a sigmoidal trend with increasing annealing temperature. In the XRD spectra, only an amorphous-like signature was observed for temperatures below 575 °C, while Pt 4f XPS showed that the deposited oxide was a mixture of PtO2 and PtO. Pt-L3 edge XANES and Pt 4f XPS spectra showed that the Pt concentration and electronic structure are predominant for temperatures equal to or above 575 °C. The morphologies of the films were investigated by the area-perimeter method from atomic force microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images, indicating that the surfaces exhibit a combination of Euclidian and fractal characteristics. Moreover, the thermal evolution of these characteristics indicates the agglomeration of the grains in the film as observed by SEM.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia through project Consolider Ingenio CSD2008-00023 and ENE2010-21198-C04-04. J. Andersson was supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundations and the SSF program MS2E. We gratefully acknowledge beamtime at the SGM beamline (CLS, Saskatoon) and the KMC-2 beamline (BESSY, Berlin). The research performed at the Canadian Light Source is supported by NSERC, NRC, CIHR, and the University of Saskatchewan. The synchrotron work at BESSY-II was supported by the EC “Research Infrastructure Action” under the FP6 “Structuring the European Research Area Programme” through the “Integrated Infrastructure Initiative Integrating Activity on Synchrotron and Free Electron Laser Science” (Contract no. R II 3-CT-2004-506008). Research at Berkeley Lab was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, E-28049, Madrid, Spain

    Adolfo Mosquera & Luis Vazquez

  2. Institut Jean Lamour, Ecole des Mines de Nancy, 54042, Nancy, France

    David Horwat

  3. Departamento de Física Aplicada and Instituto Nicolás Cabrera, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, E-28049, Madrid, Spain

    Alejandro Gutiérrez

  4. Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie GmbH, Elektronenspeicherring BESSY II, 12489, Berlin, Germany

    Alexei Erko

  5. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, California, 94720, USA

    André Anders

  6. The Angstrom Laboratory, Uppsala University, S-75121, Uppsala, Sweden

    Joakim Andersson

  7. Abengoa Research, Campus Palmas Altas, E-41014, Sevilla, Spain

    Jose L. Endrino

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  1. Adolfo Mosquera
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Correspondence to Jose L. Endrino.

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Mosquera, A., Horwat, D., Vazquez, L. et al. Thermal decomposition and fractal properties of sputter-deposited platinum oxide thin films. Journal of Materials Research 27, 829–836 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2011.418

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