Structural, Morphological and Optical Properties of Nanostructure Nickel Oxide Thin Films on Quartz Substrates Grown by Plasma Oxidation

In this work nanocrystalline nickel oxide (NiO) thin films were successfully prepared by oxygen plasma treatment of nickel films deposited on quartz substrates by direct current magnetron sputtering technique. The prepared films were characterized by XRD, XPS, FTIR, RBS, AFM, FESEM and spectrophotometry for investigation of oxygen plasma treatment power effect on structural, morphological and optical properties of prepared films. It was found that NiO films crystallize in cubic phase structure and an oxygen plasma treatment powers effectively influenced the preferred orientations. The FESEM and AFM images showed a granular structure with spherical shapes of grains for all prepared films. The size of grains was in range 23–30 nm. The transmittance and optical band gap were found to be sensitive to plasma power.