IUVSTA 15th International Vacuum Congress (IVC-15), AVS 48th International Symposium (AVS-48), 11th International Conference on Solid Surfaces (ICSS-11)
    Surface Science Tuesday Sessions
       Session SS-TuA

Paper SS-TuA9
Characterization of Copper Oxides Formed by Thermal and Plasma Oxidation Using Linear Sweep Voltammetry, Galvanostatic Reduction and XPS

Tuesday, October 30, 2001, 4:40 pm, Room 121

Session: Metal Oxides: Structure and Photocatalysis
Presenter: M.A. Hossain, Lamar University
Authors: M.A. Hossain, Lamar University
J.R. Parga, Instituto Tec. de Saltillo
H. McWhinney, Prairie View A&M University
R. Schennach, Technical University of Graz
D.L. Cocke, Lamar University
Correspondent: Click to Email
The growing importance of copper in the semiconductor industry has led to a renewed interest in the properties and growth modes of copper oxides under a variety of conditions. While thermal oxidation of copper has been studied extensively over the last decades, recent surface studies seem to ignore the possible formation of Cu@sub 3@O@sub 2@. It has been shown that thermal oxidation of copper leads to multilayer structures, which consist of Cu@sub x@O, Cu@sub 2@O, Cu@sub 3@O@sub 2@ and CuO, depending on the oxidation conditions. These oxides have been analyzed by electrochemical methods, which probe the buried interfaces in an electrical potential controlled order. XPS combined with depth profiling has been used to obtain information which applied with controlled growth complements the electrochemical methods. Linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) and galvanostatic reduction (GR) have been used to characterize the oxides formed by thermal and plasma oxidation. LSV and GR show that plasma oxidation at room temperature leads to the formation of a pure CuO film, which cannot be formed using thermal oxidation and provides insight into the formation of the other oxides and about their subsurface interfaces.