Study Of DC Magnetron Sputtered LaB₆/ITO Composite Films On SiO₂ Substrates

Magnetron sputtering technology was one kind of efficient deposition processes of thin films and had been widely used in recent years. Nano-LaB6 powders were being reported having good absorbency in the near infrared wavelength region, and as the representative transparent conductive films, ITO films had strong reflection effects in the intermediate infrared region, in order to combine the two materials' advantages in the infrared region, by DC magnetron sputtering method LaB6/ITO composite films were being deposited on glass substrates in this paper, and using the X-ray diffractometer, atomic force microscope, scanning electron microscopy and other various kinds of test instruments, we studied the sputtering films'morphological, structural and photoelectric performances under annealing and the different deposition conditions.LaB6/TTO double-layer films were influenced by both the structure of the first LaB6 layer and the annealing process, annealing promoted the film's growth of the (222) crystal orientation. Sputtering conditions had a great influence on the growth of thin films, if the films were deposited only in the Ar2 atmosphere, it was easy to form some uneven structure, after the bias voltages were being applied, the films'structure became more compact, and the films'growth was more fully. If the added power was too high or too low, the deposited films were prone to collapse, because of the big stress inside. The films'growth pattern was island growth, and there appared some tissues with the "finger" and "cone " shapes during the growth process.Changing the four kinds of sputtering conditions:Ar2 pressure, substrate bias, sputtering power, and annealing temperature, we didn't get the crystalline LaB6, XPS experiment revealed that the atomic ratio of La, B elements in the films was close to 1:1, showing that there was no effective combination of and the TEM results confirmed the LaB6's amorphous structure, the upper ITO films were well crystallized. After annealing the films' cross-sections changed from columnar structure into the equiaxial grains, the lattice constant of LaB6/ITO films increased, which was 0.3125 nm, and the hardness and elastic modulus value of the films also improved.When the sputtering time was 3 min, after annealing the films changed from amorphous to the poly-crystalline, the films'optical property and electric conductivity also obviously improved, and their resistivities could reduce two orders of magnitude at most.