Atmospheric plasma irradiation for surface modification of Cu-TiC thin film

The challenges in the field of electrical conductive coatings have stimulated us to investigate the effects of atmospheric pressure plasma jet irradiation on a conductive film surface. We report the surface modifications of Cu-TiC thin film as a function of Ar plasma irradiation (up to 25 min). Cu-TiC thin film is synthesized by a modified sol–gel technique and deposited on quartz glass. A decrease in DC static resistance (~ 2kΩ to ~ 600Ω) and surface electrical resistivity (8.05–6.12) mΩ.m is observed post plasma irradiation. The enhancements of hydrophilicity and surface free energy (39.66–72.43) mN/M have been explored from the contact angle measurements. The particle agglomeration in surface topography as observed from the scanning electron microscopy images has major contributions in the increase of average surface roughness (~ 0.46 nm to ~ 7.6 nm) in the plasma treated films, as obtained from the atomic force microscopy analysis. The energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analysis has revealed a uniform chemical homogeneity of the constituent elements throughout the surface, but oxygen weight % is reduced from 25 to 7% after plasma irradiation. The X-ray diffraction pattern and fast fourier transform analysis depict the polycrystalline structure of the films. We propose this technique for optimizing the conductive surface parameters of Cu-TiC films without disrupting the chemical modifications.