Low temperature growth of nanocrystalline TiO2 films with Ar/O₂ low-field helicon plasma

TiO₂ thin films were deposited on silicon wafer substrates by low-field (1<B<5mT) helicon plasma assisted reactive sputtering in a mixture of pure argon and oxygen. The influence of the positive ion density on the substrate and the post-annealing treatment on the films density, refractive index, chemical composition and crystalline structure was analysed by reflectometry, Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Amorphous TiO₂ was obtained for ion density on the substrate below 7×10¹⁶m^-3. Increasing the ion density over 7×10¹⁶m^-3 led to the formation of nanocrystalline (~15nm) rutile phase TiO₂. The post-annealing treatment of the films in air at 300°C induced the complete crystallisation of the amorphous films to nanocrystals of anatase (~40nm) while the rutile films shows no significant change meaning that they were already fully crystallised by the plasma process. All these results show an efficient process by low-field helicon plasma sputtering process to fabricate stoichiometric TiO₂ thin films with amorphous or nanocrystalline rutile structure directly from low temperature plasma processing conditions and nanocrystalline anatase structure with a moderate annealing treatment.