Room temperature growth of ultra porous hot-wire deposited tantalum pentoxide

Tantalum pentoxide films were deposited on Si substrates at room temperature, by heating metallic filaments at temperatures below 600 o C, at a pressure of 1 Torr in O2 environment. This deposition method can be applied for all metallic oxides having higher vapor pressure than the corresponding metal. These (hwTa2O5) films were composed by amorphous material (as revealed by XRD measurements) and were found to be highly transparent within the range 350-1000 nm. Spectroscopic ellipsometry measurements have shown that the real part of the refractive index (n) of hwTa2O5 films depends on the deposition time and has a value below 1.5. As shown by scanning electron microscopy (TEM) measurements, these grains were composed by others with dimensions near 5 nm and with voids between them. The above microscopy measurements explain the high porosity of hwTa2O5 films. Moreover, hwTa2O5 films were also characterized by XPS and UPS measurements and the stoichiometric composition of the deposited fil