Temperature effect on the growth rate and physical characteristics of SnO₂ thin films grown by atomic layer deposition

Among the various thin film coating techniques, atomic layer deposition (ALD) has features of good controllability of the thickness, excellent step-coverage in 3-dimensional object even in the sub-nm thickness range at the relatively low deposition temperature. In this study, SnO₂ thin films were grown by ALD in the variation of substrate temperatures from 150 to 250°C. Even such a low temperature may influence on the growth kinetics of the ALD reaction and thus the physical characteristics of thin films, such as crystallinity, film density and optical band gap, etc. We observed the decrease of the growth rate with increasing substrate temperature, at the same time, the density of the film was decreased with increasing temperature. Steric hindrance effect of the precursor molecule was attributed to the inverse relationship of the growth temperature and growth rate as well as the film density. Optical indirect band gap energy (~3.6 eV) of the ALD-grown amorphous SnO₂ films grown at 150°C was similar with that of the literature value, while slightly lower band gap energy (~3.4 eV) was acquired at the films grown at higher temperature.