Study the effect of thermal annealing on some physical properties of thin Cu2SiO3 films prepared by pulsed laser deposition

Abstract

The Cu2SiO3 composite has been prepared from the binary compounds (Cu2O, and SiO2) with high purity by solid state reaction. The Cu2SiO3 thin films were deposited at room temperature on glass and Si substrates with thickness 400 nm by pulsed laser deposition method. X-ray analysis showed that the powder of Cu2SiO3 has a polycrystalline structure with monoclinic phase and preferred orientation along (111) direction at 2θ around 38.670o which related to CuO phase. While as deposited and annealed Cu2SiO3 films have amorphous structure. The morphological study revealed that the grains have granular and elliptical shape, with average diameter of 163.63 nm. The electrical properties which represent Hall effect were investigated. Hall coefficient is negative which means that the films are n-type, and the electrical conductivity decreases with heat treatment.
The sensing properties of the Cu2SiO3 sensors for NO2 gas have been studied, and the result revealed that the Cu2SiO3 films have low sensitivity at room temperature, and it's improve with increasing the operation temperature. The response time increase while the recovery time decrease with increasing operation temperature.