Influence of post-deposition annealing on structural, morphological and optical properties of copper (II) acetylacetonate thin films.

In this study, the effect of thermal annealing under vacuum conditions on structural, morphological and optical properties of thermally evaporated copper (II) acetylacetonate, cu(acac), thin films were investigated. The copper (II) acetylacetonate thin films were deposited using thermal evaporation technique at vacuum pressure ~1 × 10 mbar. The deposited films were thermally annealed at 323, 373, 423, and 473 K for 2 h in vacuum. The thermogravimetric analysis of cu(acac) powder indicated a thermal stability of cu(acac) up to 423 K. The effects of thermal annealing on the structural properties of cu(acac) were evaluated employing X-ray diffraction method and the analysis showed a polycrystalline nature of the as-deposited and annealed films with a preferred orientation in [1¯01] direction. Fourier transformation infrared (FTIR) technique was used to negate the decomposition of copper (II) acetylacetonate during preparation or/and annealing up to 423 K. The surface morphology of the prepared films was characterized by means of field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). A significant enhancement of the morphological properties of cu(acac) thin films was obtained till the annealing temperature reaches 423 K. The variation of optical constants that estimated from spectrophotometric measurements of the prepared thin films was investigated as a function of annealing temperature. The annealing process presented significantly impacted the nonlinear optical properties such as third-order optical susceptibility χ and nonlinear refractive index n of cu(acac) thin films.