Impact of heat treatment on the physical properties of sputtered nickel oxide thin films containing molybdenum

The effect of annealing the substrate on the structural and optical properties of the nickel oxide thin films containing a fixed ratio of molybdenum was investigated. Energy- dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) revealed that the Mo ratio is 4.41 wt%. X-ray diffraction (XRD) revealed that the formed films comprise a phase of NiO0.96. The average crystallite size, dislocation density, and strain function were calculated. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was employed to investigate the morphology and surface roughness. With the increase in the substrate temperature from 298 K to 673 K, the optical band gap values varied from 3.72 eV to 3.58 eV.