Structural study of titanium oxide films synthesized by ion beam-assisted deposition

The application of titanium dioxide (TiO₂) films as surgical implant coatings for antibiotic attachment depends crucially on their available surface area and thus their surface morphology and crystallinity. Here, we report our fabrication of high Wenzel ratio TiO₂ films targeted to increase the film surface area using the ion beam-assisted deposition (IBAD) technique at high-deposition temperatures (∼610°C). The modulation of the films' surface morphology was accomplished by varying the chemical identity of the concurrent ion beams bombarded on the films during the e-beam evaporation process. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were employed to investigate the surface morphology of the as-deposited films. X-ray diffractometry (XRD) revealed that these nanocrystalline films primarily consist of anatase phase TiO₂. Wenzel ratio, the ratio of the actual surface area to the projected area, of IBAD films prepared with argon, oxygen, and nitrogen ion beams was measured to be 1.52, 1.31 and 1.49, respectively. The effect of the differences in chemical reactivity and ion size of these three type ion beams are discussed to explain the present results.