Measurement Procedures for the Electrical Characterization of Oxide Thin Films

This paper describes a measurement system for the electrical characterization of oxide thin films. Such films can be produced using plasma-sputtering processes and permit the realization of a large set of high-performance components, such as capacitors, active devices, sensors, and protective coatings. The electrical properties of the oxide films, which have a thickness of less than 1 μm, are difficult to measure since very high resistances (on the order of gigaohms) and small capacitances (on the order of picofarads) are expected for contact areas smaller than 1 mm2. The measurement system and the procedures described in this paper represent an alternative solution to the commercial devices, which usually employ a mercury probe for performing the contact with the specimen under characterization. Furthermore, the proposed system can be used not only to estimate the electrical properties of a single point but to evaluate the uniformity of oxide films on large specimens as well. The experimental results reported refer to valve-metal-based oxide films deposited in a lab-scale capacitively coupled parallel-plate reactor and show the effectiveness of the proposed procedures.