Some physical properties of a Si-doped nano-crystalline GaAs thin film grown by thermionic vacuum arc

•The high quality nano structured Si doped GaAs film deposited.•Optical and morphological properties were determined.•The surface free energy of Si doped GaAs film was calculated.•Dielectric constants and dissipation factor of the material were determined.

A 160 nm thick Si-doped nano-crystalline GaAs film was grown on a glass substrate by means of the thermionic vacuum arc in just 50 s. Tools and techniques such as an optical reflectometer, Uv–Vis–NIR spectrophotometer, XRD, FESEM, AFM, Hall effect measurement, and diiodomethane, ethylene glycol, formamide, and water contact angle measurements were employed to investigate some of the physical properties of the produced film. XRD characterization indicated that the film contained GaAs (hexagonal system in atomic ratio of 1) and SiAs (monoclinic system in atomic ratio of 1) phases. The grain size obtained from Scherrer's Formula was in the range of 30–40 nm. The AFM micrographs showed the film topography, revealing a surface root mean square roughness of 14.5 nm and average height of 48.3 nm. From the wetting experiments, it was found that the contact angle value is strongly dependent on the liquid used.