Studies of structural and optical properties of sputtered SiC thin films

Abstract

The present study explored the deposition of amorphous silicon carbide (a-SiC) thin films on Si (100) and glass substrates using RF-magnetron sputtering. The sputtering power is changed from 100 to 250 W to study its influence on the characteristics of a-SiC thin films. Raman spectroscopy reveals the formation of a-SiC as well as carbon clusters. The film deposited at 100 W clearly shows the presence of both transverse optical (TO) and longitudinal optical (LO) phonon modes. The average roughness of the a-SiC films found to follow an increasing trend with increase in the sputtering power. The optical band gap of the a-SiC films measured by UV-Visible spectrophotometer was found to increase up to 2.45 eV with decrease in sputtering power. All a-SiC thin films were highly transparent. The Photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy results were in agreement with the data observed by UV-Visible spectroscopy