Investigate the structural, morphological, and topographical characteristics of CuO thin films utilizing a pulsed laser deposition method
Authors
Abstract
In this work, copper oxide (CuO) thin films were prepared using the pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique. The effect of laser beam energy and pulse number on the structural, morphological, and topographical characteristics was investigated. X-ray diffraction (XRD) results indicate the presence of characteristic peaks for CuO with a crystalline growth orientation at the (111) plane and an increase in crystallite size (D) when the laser power and number of pulses increase. EDX results indicate the presence of distinct energy peaks for the copper and oxygen elements that form CuO, and the weight percentage (wt.%) of Cu increases with increasing laser energy. The atomic force microscope (AFM) results showed the dependence of the roughness on the laser energy used, as the roughness decreased from 31.18 to 20.89 nm when the energy increased from 700 to 820 mJ. It increases with the increase in the number of laser pulses at the same energy (700 mJ). Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) confirms the presence of sub-spherical nanoparticles, and increasing laser energy and pulses increases nanoparticle size.
