Physical characteristic of room-temperature deposited TiO2 thin films by RF magnetron sputtering at different RF power

TiO₂ thin films of various thicknesses were grown on glass substrates by Radio Frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering technique with sputtering power varied from 100W to 300W. The thickness of the thin films are measured using surface profiler KLA Tencor P-6 and it is observed that the thickness increased as the sputter power increased and uniformity is observed at sputtering power of 300W. Sputtering rate increases form 0.67nm/minutes to 1.69nm/min and 6.55nm/min as the sputter power increases from 100W, 200W and 300W, respectively. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to study the roughness of the thin films. Higher surface roughness was observed as the sputtering power increased, up to 300W. FESEM analysis revealed that at 100W sputter power, particle size varied from 35nm to 82nm showing that the deposition was non uniform. As the power increases, the particle size difference range became smaller.