Abstract
Surface microstructural properties such as surface roughness, and grain size have a decisive role in increasing the corrosion resistance of the materials. This study is mainly focused on characterization of the surface of oxide thin films using atomic force microscopy (AFM). These films having a thickness of about 500 nm, had been processed using ion-beam sputter deposition, and ion-beam-assisted sputter deposition (IBASD) methods. The following conclusions were made. i) The surface roughness caused during deposition was about 1 to 5 nm, depending on the film material and assisting beam current density. The surface roughness of Al2O3 was less than that of TiO2 in most cases. ii) The roughness of the surface directly reflected that of the initial surface. However, the ion beam current which influenced the poly-crystallization of the film material, also contributed to the increase in surface roughness. This was more significantly observed in the case of titanium dioxide prepared under irradiation of 5μA/cm2 ion beam.
