Variations of Optical and Structural Properties of Thin Films with Thermal Treatment

The effects of thermal treatment on the optical and structural properties of cobalt oxide thin films synthesized in the pores of PVP by chemical bath deposition technique were investigated. Films deposited were crystalline. The optical properties of the films were got from absorbance, transmittance reflectance, refractive index, absorption coefficient, and extinction coefficient measurements. The synthesized films turned out to be cobalt oxyhydroxide , CoO(OH), nanocrystals. The crystals obtained were of size 41.84 nm; however, as annealing temperature increased, the size decreased to 16.28 nm. The absorption coefficient, refractive index, and extinction coefficient were found to increase with increase in annealing temperature though not sequentially. For the same energy ranges of the incident photons, the absorption coefficient and refractive index ranged from 0.2 to 1.8 and from 1.4 to 2.3, respectively. The energy band-gap of the films ranged from 1.96 eV to 2.22 eV.