Infrared characterization of strontium titanate thin films

Strontium titanate thin films have been prepared at different oxygen pressures with various post-deposition annealing treatments. The films were deposited by pulsed laser ablation at room temperature on Si(001) substrates with a silica buffer layer. Infrared reflectance measurements were performed in order to determine relevant film parameters such as layer thicknesses and chemical composition. The infrared reflectance spectra were fitted by using adequate dielectric function forms for each layer. The fitting procedure provided the extraction of the dielectric functions of the strontium titanate film, the silica layer and the substrate. The as-deposited films are found to be amorphous, and their infrared spectra present peaks corresponding to modes with high damping constants. As the annealing time and temperature increases the strontium titanate layer becomes more ordered so that it can be described by its SrTiO3 bulk mode parameters. Also, the silica layer grows along with the ordering of the strontium titanate film, due to oxidation during annealing. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.