Multifractal study of TiO2 thin films deposited by MO-CVD method: The role of precursor amount and substrate temperature

•Multifractal analysis was applied to the AFM images to study the surface morphology of TiO2 thin films.•Multifractal nature of surface of TiO2 thin films is observed.•Highest distribution on highest sites was increased for high amount of precursor.•The results illustrated that deposition masses occurred more at highest sites on surface.•Multifractality of the samples surface increased with decreasing substrate temperature and precursor amount. Since TiO2 thin film is an important semiconductor with many applications in various fields, in this work we studied surface morphology of TiO2 thin films deposited by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition method using multifractal technique. In order to do this, AFM images of prepared TiO2 thin films were analyzed by multifractal method and the effects of the precursor amount and substrate temperature on multifractality of The TiO2 thin films surface were investigated. Multifractal nature of surface of TiO2 thin films deposited with different amounts of precursor at two different positions of substrate with different temperatures was detected using multifractal analysis of the AFM images. The multifractal spectrum f(α) obtained from AFM images indicated that the Δf and width of spectrum are functions dependent on precursor amount and substrate temperature. The obtained data showed that local fluctuation and hight distribution increase with increasing in temperature of substrate for high amount of precursor. Also, it was observed that the substrate temperature has no effect on width of multifractal spectrum at low amount of precursor. Our results clearly showed that morphological complexity of the TiO2 surface and the effect of the precursor amount and temperature of substrate are satisfactorily described by perform multifractal analysis on AFM images. These results can be used in the design and manufacture of interface layer for application in laptops, planer device, transparent electrode, solar cell, sensors and optical devices.