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Optical analysis of room temperature magnetron sputtered ITO films by reflectometry and spectroscopic ellipsometry

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Abstract

Indium-tin-oxide (ITO) thin films were prepared by reactive magnetron sputtering; their optical constants and thickness were determined by spectral reflectometry (SR) in the wavelength range from 400 nm to 800 nm and spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) in the wavelength range from 191 nm to 1690 nm. A comparative evaluation of the measured data from SR and SE has been made using the same single layer optical model based on the Cauchy dispersion relation.

The introduction of a surface roughness layer into the optical model considerably improved the fit quality during evaluation of SE data. Vertical inhomogeneity of the ITO thin films was assessed using a multilayer optical model describing porosity gradient and the three-layer optical model suggested by Jung [Y.S. Jung, Thin Solid Films 467, 36 (2004)] from the SE data.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors acknowledge the support of the Hungarian-Indian R&D Cooperation Program under the contracts No. TÉT10-1-2011-0305 and INT/HUN/P-O4/2012 dated 27 Sept 2012 (DST, Govt of India project sanction: TET_09_IN_DST_KFI dated 21 March 2012), the support from the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA No. K81842), and the Hungarian National Development Agency grant TÁMOP-4.2.2/B-10/1-2010-0025; Department of Science and Technology, Government of India (INT/HUN/P-04/2012 dated 15 Dec 2009) for supporting the project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Photonics, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Institute for Technical Physics and Materials Science, H-1121, Budapest, Hungary

    Tivadar Lohner & Péter Petrik

  2. Semiconductor Laboratory, Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, 600036, India

    K. Jagadeesh Kumar & Aryasomayajula Subrahmanyam

  3. Department of Nanotechnology, University of Pannonia, H-8200, Veszprém, Hungary

    Péter Petrik & István Bársony

  4. Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Institute for Technical Physics and Materials Science, H-1121, Budapest, Hungary

    István Bársony

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  1. Tivadar Lohner
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Correspondence to Tivadar Lohner.

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Lohner, T., Kumar, K.J., Petrik, P. et al. Optical analysis of room temperature magnetron sputtered ITO films by reflectometry and spectroscopic ellipsometry. Journal of Materials Research 29, 1528–1536 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2014.173

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