Hieronim Szymanowski

Plasma enhanced aerosol–gel method: a new way of preparing ceramic coatings

The sol–gel process is widely used for the production of powders, coatings and bulk materials. However, being a wet-chemical technique, it has certain limitations related to properties of aqueous colloidal solution, especially when applied as a coating. The most frequently used methods, such as dip- and spin-coating, are difficult to apply onto more complex substrates. In these cases, the aerosol–gel deposition method can be regarded as the solution of this problem. In the present article, a novel plasma enhanced aerosol–gel method of coatings production is presented. A novelty of this method is based on an integration of the aerosol–gel deposition of thin films and their low temperature plasma treatment. Owing to the above, all stages of the coatings production process—substrate preparation, film deposition, and its plasma treatment, can be carried out in a single reactor. The design and operational scheme of such device is presented in this work. Using this device, thin coatings were first deposited on substrates and then plasma treated. The effect of deposition and plasma discharge conditions on morphology and chemical structure of the films has been studied. It was found that plasma treatment had a substantial influence on all the examined properties of the aerosol–gel deposited coatings.

Thin SixNyCz films deposited from hexamethyldisilazane by RF PECVD technique for optical filter applications

Abstract This work initiates a series of reports aimed at a construction of rugate optical filters based on silicon rich materials of alternating gradients of refractive index n with the help of plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) technique, The idea is to start deposition of high refractive index SixNy type of material using hexamethyldisilazane (HMDSN) vapor and nitrogen rich atmosphere, and then to gradually replace nitrogen with oxygen in that atmosphere in order to lower n down to a minimum characteristic of SixOy type of material. A return to initial gas composition should increase the index back to its maximum. In the present work, thin SixNyCz films were synthesized from a mixture of HMDSN vapor with gaseous NH3 and N2. The effect of NH3/N2 ratio on the coating morphology, its elemental composition, chemical bonding and optical properties was studied using scanning electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, ultra-violet absorption spectroscopy and variable angle spectroscopic ellipsometry. The results show that films of the highest index of refraction and the lowest extinction coefficient have been deposited from the gas mixture containing 90 % of ammonia. These coatings are also characterized by the lowest carbon and the highest nitrogen contents.