TEM Study of the Effect of the Sapphire Substrate Surface Orientation on the Microstructure of Tin Dioxide Films

Abstract Tin dioxide (SnO2) has been extensively studied and used as gas sensors to detect toxic gases such as CO, NOxand flammable gases like H2.[l] Recently, considerable researches have focused on thin film sensors due to their high performance as well as their integration compatibility with semiconductor technology for making microsensors and sensor arrays. [2] The performance of thin film sensors is remarkably influenced by the way they were fabricated.[3] Among various deposition techniques, pulsed laser deposition (PLD) has shown great prominence in the deposition of a wide variety of oxide thin film materials such as high Tc superconductors, semiconductors and dielectrics. in this work we present our experimental results on tin dioxide films deposited using pulsed laser ablation on sapphire (α -Al2O3) substrates with different surface orientations. Tin oxide films with a thickness of 100 nm were deposited on the (1012) and (0001) sapphire by pulsed laser ablation of ceramic SnO2 targets.