Ceramic films surface morphology

Carrier properties. Carriers can be shaped and configured as films, fibers, planar surfaces, or spheres. Surface morphology, i.e., surface texture and porosity, can exert a decisive influence as can carrier materials the most important are inorganic materials such as ceramics or glass, synthetic polymers such as nylon or polystyrene, and polysaccharide materials such as cellulose, agarose, or dextran. 

Figure 9.8 Reprinted from Susnitzky D.W. and Carter, C.B. (1992) Surface morphology of heat-treated ceramic thin films, J. Am. Ceram. Soc. 75, 2471, with permission from Blackwell Publishing and the American Ceramic Society.

Some substrates must be heated for deposition. For example, large ceramic (brittle) substrates must be evenly heated to avoid large temperature gradients, which could result in fracture, across their surface. Many coating materials and phases also require a warm or hot substrate to deposit. This characteristic is related to the surface diffusion and thermodynamics of the materials. A material s dependence on a heated substrate may be only for the deposition itself to achieve a dense, continuous film or for the deposition of a particular phase or morphology. For example, many materials require a hotter substrate to form a crystalline film as opposed to an amorphous film. 

Fig. 1 shows the contact mode AFM images of the surface of PTCDI films deposited onto the cold and hot mica substrates. The films on glass-ceramic substrates demonstrate the same morphology. The PTCDI films with thickness of... 

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