Application of scanning microscopy to study correlation between thermal properties and morphology of BaTiO3 thin films

We demonstrate the application of the Scanning Thermal Microscopy to quantitative characterization of the thermal properties of barium titanate (BaTiO3) thin films. The results showed that the thermal properties of thin films depend on deposition parameters and can be modified by the annealing of the sample. Microscopic investigations provided information about morphology of non-annealed and annealed layers. The non-annealed layer consists of uniformly distributed, relatively small grains, while in the annealed sample bigger crystallites packed into randomly distributed islands occur. Thermal images revealed that the samples are thermally uniform and, similarly to the atomic force microscopy results, confirmed the grained structure of the annealed sample. The thermal conductivities of BaTiO3 thin films, determined from comparison of measurements carried out for investigated samples and reference samples, were estimated to 4.1 W·m− 1·K− 1 and 5.3 W·m− 1·K− 1 for the non-annealed and the annealed samples, respectively.