Sandwich heterostructures of antimony trioxide and bismuth trioxide films: Structural, morphological and optical analysis

Thin film heterostructures can be advantageous since they either exhibit novel or a combination of the properties of their components. Here we propose sandwich-type of heterostructures made of antimony trioxide and bismuth trioxide thin films, which were deposited on glass substrates by thermal vacuum deposition at three substrate temperatures, 50° Celsius apart. Their morphology and optical properties are studied as compared to the corresponding monolayers. It was found that even small substrate temperature changes strongly influence their morphology, increasing their roughness, while the optical transmittance shows a slight decrease as compared with the individual layers. The corresponding absorption coefficient exhibits intermediate values as compared to the component oxides, while the energy bandgaps for the indirect allowed transitions move towards the Infrared when overlapping the antimony and bismuth trioxides.