Morphological characterization of ITO thin films surfaces

In this study, indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films were deposited by electron beam evaporation method on glass substrates at room temperature, followed by postannealing at 200 and 300 °C for annealing time up to 1 h. Fractal image processing has been applied to describe the surface morphology of ITO thin films from their atomic force microscopy (AFM) images. These topographical images of the ITO thin films indicate changes in morphological behavior of the film. Also, the results suggest that the fractal dimension D can be used to explain the change of the entire grain morphology along the growth direction.