Some experimental results about thickness uniformity, composition uniformity, and stoichiometry of large-area multicomponent oxide thin films deposited by inverted cylindrical sputtering from a compound target were reported. Rutherford backscattering had been employed to determine the thickness distribution, the composition distribution, and the stoichiometry of NdBa2Cu3O7 x thin films. For the film deposited on stationary substrate, the thickness and composition deviate severely. But using suitable substrate movements, we could reduce both the thickness and composition deviation simultaneously without the decrease in deposition rate. Uniform 3-in. thin films could be obtained at a relatively high deposition rate on substrate with displaced tilted in-plane rotation or biaxial rotation.

ZnO adsorption on sapphire (0001) surface is theoretically calculated by using a plane wave ultrasoft pseudo-potential method based on ab initio molecular dynamics. The results reveal that the surface relaxation in the first layer Al-O is reduced, even eliminated after the surface adsorption of ZnO, and the chemical bonding energy is 434.3 (±38.6) kJ·mol−1. The chemical bond of ZnO (0.185±0.01nm) has a 30° angle away from the adjacent Al-O bond, and the stable chemical adsorption position of the Zn is deflected from the surface O-hexagonal symmetry with an angle of about 30°. The analysis of the atomic populations, density of state and bonding electronic density before and after the adsorption indicates that the chemical bond formed by the O2− of the ZnO and the surface Al3+ has a strong ionic bonding characteristic, while the chemical bond formed by the Zn2+ and the surface O2− has an obvious covalent characteristic, which comes mainly from the hybridization of the Zn 4s and the O 2p and partially from that of the Zn 3d and the O 2p.

In the layer-by-layer growth regime of SrTiO3 films with pulsed laser molecular beam epitaxy, the relaxation behaviors of RHEED intensity after termination of growth were studied. From the characteristic relaxation times as a function of substrate temperatures, it was revealed that the surface relaxation occurred with low activity energy for diffusion of 0.3 eV and slow relaxation process, which was argued to be attributed to the diffusion of charge-neutral SrTiO3 units.

The amorphous SrTiO3 (STO) thin films prepared on Si (111) substrates by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) deposition were crystallized at different temperatures for various annealing time using rapid thermal annealing (RTA) process. Grazing incidence X-ray diffraction and atomic force microscopy were applied to investigate the crystallinity and surface morphology of annealed STO thin films. The results showed that the formation of STO crystalline phase was strongly dependent on the annealing temperature, and the increase of annealing temperature led to an improvement in the crystalline quality. However, at a certain annealing temperature, though the crystalline quality and surface morphology could be improved with increasing annealing time, the grain growth showed a saturation of grain size which was independent on the annealing time. Moreover, with increasing temperature, the saturated grain size decreased at lower temperatures while increased slightly at higher temperatures. A phenomenological assumption had been introduced to explain the experimental observations.