Microstructures and optical properties of nanocrystalline rare earth stabilized zirconia thin films deposited by a simple sol-gel method

摘要

Dense, crack-free and homogeneous nanocrystalline (ZrO_2)_(0.92)(RE_2O_3)_(0.08)(RE = Sc, Y, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb, Lu) thin films (about 200 ran in thickness) have been fabricated on quartz substrate by a simple sol-gel spin coating technique. The films can crystallize in a pure cubic fluorite structure at a low annealing temperature of 600 deg C. The optical band gaps of films annealed within 600-900 deg C were determined by an ultraviolet and visible spectrophotometer, and arc in the range 4.88-5.44 eV. It is also shown that the optical band gaps of the films not only depend on the ionic size of the rare earth doped, b also mostly decrease with increase in annealing temperature due to the size-dependent effect.