Substrate Temperature Dependent Properties of Cu Doped NiO Films Deposited by DC Reactive Magnetron Sputtering

The NiO–Cu composite films were deposited on a glass substrate at various substrate temperatures by DC reactive magnetron sputtering technique. The effect of substrate temperature on the structural, optical, morphological and electrical properties of the films was mainly investigated. X-ray diffraction studies revealed that when the substrate temperature increased to above 200 °C, the preferred orientation tended to move to another preferred site from (220) to (111) and had a stable cubic structure. The optical transmittance and band gap values increased with increasing substrate temperature. From the morphological studies, it was observed that the grain size and root mean square roughness were increased with increasing substrate temperature. The electrical resistivity of the film decreased to 0.017 Ω cm at high substrate temperature of 400 °C.