Nanoscratch Test And Finit Element Simulation Of TiO₂ Thin Film

TiO₂ thin film and with Ce4+ doped and un-doped of one, three, five layers were prepared by a sol-gel dip coating process on glass. The influence of bonding energy by Ce4 + doping and film thickness were investigated.The surface topography of TiO₂ thin films were characterized by atomic force microscopy（AFM）.The analysis results indicated that the surface roughness of the samples gradually decreased with the increase of layers.The thickness of TiO₂ thin films of one, three, five layers were about 40 nm, 70 nm and 100 nm respectively, while the TiO₂ thin films with Ce4+ doped of one, three, five layers were about 41 nm,60nm and 89 nm respectively.It is concluded by nanoscratcth test that the critical load of TiO₂ of one, three, five layers were about 150 mN,430mN,800 mN, while the TiO₂ thin films with Ce4+ doped of one, three, five layers were about 300 mN,600mN,930 mN. Bonding energy between thin film and glass substrate were obtained by formula computing which were 1.74J/m2,2.28 J/m2 and 3.75 J/m2 respectively;meanwhile the TiO₂ thin films with Ce4+ doped of one, three, five layers were about 2.03 J/m2,3.17 J/m2,4.62 J/m2 respectively. The result showed that the critical load along with the layers’ increase; and Ce4+ doped can enhance the bonding energy.The critical load in finite element simulation were compared with the result in the former nanoscratch test. It can be shown that the finite element method can be a reference in engineering practice and had a deviation with the experimental results.