Spin-Coating and Characterization of Chalcogenide Glass Thin Films

Spin-coating is a method to produce thin films of materials that is quite simple and provides fairly high quality. In this work the process of spin-coating for different chalcogenide glasses such as As2S3, As2Se3, and GeS is investigated and discussed. The mechanism of spin-coating for As2S3 is relatively well understood. Our goal is to investigate the effects the different variables of spin-coating have on the final film quality and performance. At the same time, very little investigation has been done on the spin-coating or even the dissolution of As2Se3 and almost none on GeS2 and GeSe2 glasses. It was found that spin-coating As2Se3 is much more challenging than As2S3 due to a variety of factors and the usual methods applied for arsenic sulphides are not as effective for As2Se3. It is also seen that the quality of the films of GeS(Se)2 produced using our methods are very low, necessitating the use of a different approach. The thermal properties of As2S3 thin films produced by thermal evaporation and spin-coating were also investigated using a Differential Scanning Calorimetry method to find if annealing has any effect on the glass transition temperature and crystallization.