Physical and Chemical Investigation of Substrate Temperature Dependence of Zirconium Oxide Films on Si(100)

We report here the surface behavior of zirconium oxide deposited on Si(100) substrate depending on the different substrate temperatures. The zirconium oxide thin films were successfully deposited on the Si(100) surfaces applying radio-frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering process. The obtained zirconium oxide films were characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) for study about the chemical environment of the elements, X-ray diffraction (XRD) for check the crystallinity of the films, spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) technique for measuring the thickness of the films, and the morphology of the films were investigated by atomic force microscope (AFM). We found that the oxidation states of zirconium were changed from zirconium suboxides ($ZrO_{x,y}$, x,y < 2) (x; higher and y; lower oxidation state of zirconium) to zirconia ($ZrO_2$), and the surface was smoothed as the substrate temperature increased.