Study of surface morphology and optical properties of Nb2O5 thin films with annealing

Nb2O5 films have been deposited on variety of substrates using the sol-gel dip coating technique. As-deposited films on all substrates are amorphous. Films were annealed under controlled ambience at 300, 400 and 600degreesC for 5 h. As-deposited films on glass substrate show uniform surface structure. The crystal structure and surface topography are found to depend strongly on the annealing temperature and nature of the substrates. The average grain size of 40 nm is observed in films annealed at 300degreesC. On annealing at 400degreesC increasing grain size and resulting fusing of them, enhanced surface roughness. Films deposited on NaCl substrates crystallized into a stable monoclinic phase and those deposited on single crystal Si substrates crystallized into hexagonal phase after annealing at 600degreesC. The as-deposited films show very high transmittance (> 90%) in the visible region. The optical band gap is observed to increase from 4.35 eV when the films are in amorphous state to 4.87 eV on crystallization. (C) 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.