Search for correlations between morphological characteristics and the crystallite sizes in thin zinc oxide films

TL;DR

This study investigates the relationship between morphological features and crystallite sizes in plasma-treated ZnO thin films, using computational analysis of SPM data and experimental validation to uncover size-structure correlations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel computational approach to analyze SPM data for identifying size-morphology correlations in plasma-modified ZnO films.

Findings

Strong plasma-induced changes in crystallite sizes interpreted as phase transitions

Computational analysis correlates morphology with crystallite size

Experimental XRD and optical spectra confirm computational results

Abstract

Size-property relations in plasma-modified ZnO thin films have been investigated as a function of plasma treatment duration. The correlations between crystallite sizes and the morphological characteristics of films have been extracted on the basis of the frontier computational analysis of the scanning probe microscope (SPM) data matrices. The nanocluster structure of oxide films have been studied in detail with high accuracy. The strong plasma-induced changes in crystallite sizes have been interpreted as a size-structure phase transition. Direct measurements of X-ray diffraction and optical transmittance spectra have confirmed the results obtained with computational approaches. The discovery size-morphology correlations in thin oxide films might open new avenues ultimately leading towards deeper insight into unsolved problems of evaluation of optimal technological conditions for thin oxide film designing.