Abstract

In the previous paper¹⁾, we reported the technique to obtain homogeneous and particularly both of positively and negatively inhomogeneous films of TiO₂ from the starting material of Ti₃O₅ by ion assisted deposition method. The degree of the inhomogeneity obtained by this method is shown to be about 0.5, and this value is extraordinarily large. To establish the stable inhomogeneous films of TiO₂, including the dynamic behaviour of optical properties of the inhomogeneous films, it is vital to analyse the surface and cross-sectional structures of these films. The structure models, possible to explain these dynamic behaviour, have been proposed and examined^1,4). Recent tendency for mass production of optical thin film systems is to adopt ion assisted deposition(IAD) or ion plating(IP) to exclude porosity, which is inherently occouring within the films during deposition, to avoid additional dynamic change caused by the sorption of water vapor to the porosity. In this paper we will observe the surface topology by ultra high resolution scanning electron microscope(UHR-SEM) and the non-contact surface profilometer. It is also the purpose to check the cross-sectional structure of the films, and here we have tried to analyse and compare those of the homogeneous and both of the positively and the negatively inhomogeneous TiO₂ films by UHR-SEM.

© 1995 Optical Society of America