Growth Kinetics of CVD TiO2: Influence of Carrier Gas

This paper reports on the growth rate of TiO{sub 2} thin films deposited by the decomposition of titanium tetraisopropoxide (TTIP) in the presence of N{sub 2} carrier gas. Experiments are performed at TTIP partial pressures between 0.005 and 0.7 torr and a substrate temperature of 573 K, conditions where second-order kinetics have previously been observed in the presence of TTIP alone. When 5 torr of N{sub 2} is present as a carrier gas, the kinetics become first order in TTIP concentration. By fitting the observed rates to the rate expression for the bimolecular reaction mechanism proposed in the earlier study, the authors obtain a value of {phi} = 0.43 for the relative efficiency of N{sub 2} for collisional energy transfer, compared to TTIP.