Physical Vapor Deposition technique and its application to thin organometallic films

This work contains description of the Physical Vapor Deposition technique and its application to selected organometallic thin films deposition process. We investigation results of the structural and optical properties of the thin films containing metal (M = Zn, Cu and Al) and bis- or tris(8-hydroxyquinoline). The films were successfully grown by physical vapor deposition (PVD) technique in high vacuum on transparent (quartz) and semiconductor (n-type silicon) substrates kept at room temperature during the deposition process. Selected films were annealed after fabrication in ambient atmosphere for 24 hours at the temperature equal to 50 °C, 100 °C and 150 °C. Spectral properties of these films were examined using classical and time-dependent photoluminescence investigations. Nonlinear optical effects were studied using Third Harmonic Generation and Z-Scan techniques. Structural properties were investigated by optical images and AFM measurements. The Mqn (n = 2 or 3) films exhibit high structural quality regardless of the annealing process, but the stability of the film can be improved by using an appropriate temperature during the annealing process. We find that the optical properties were strictly connected with the morphology and the temperature of annealing process can change the structural as well as optical properties of the films.