Abstract
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•Synthesis of high quality p-type SnO thin films by e-beam evaporation method.•Post deposition heat treatment of SnOx films at temperature (300–700 °C).•Optimal annealing reduces the crystal imperfections and band-tail states in SnO films.•Study of temperature-dependent morphology evolution for preferred crystal growth.
In the present work, we demonstrate the growth of tin oxide (SnOx) thin films using electron beam evaporation method to study the phase transition from stannous oxide (SnO) to stannic oxide (SnO2) by varying annealing temperature (i.e., from 300 to 700 °C). Annealing induced morphology evolution and structural modifications stimulate the process of phase-transformation, which is primarily discussed by divided the entire temperature range into two-regimes. Regime-A (from 300 to 400 °C) consists of tetragonal α-SnO dominated phase, regime-B (from 600 to 700 °C) exhibits orthorhombic pure SnO2 phase. However, these regimes are being separated by an interface conferring a mixed-phase of tin oxides at an annealing temperature ∼500 °C. This temperature-dependent phase-inversion is adequately controlled by tuning the morphological, structural and optical properties of SnOx thin films to develop homo/heterostructures for various photovoltaic and optoelectronic applications.