Determination of Reactive RF-Sputtering Parameters for Fabrication of SiOx Films with Specified Refractive Index, for Highly Reflective SiOx Distributed Bragg Reflector
Open accessAbstract
Fabricating materials with specific refractive indices, which do not naturally exist in the nature, has always been an issue. This paper presents a method for fabricating SiOxfilms with specified refractive index. It is well known that the refractive index of reactively sputtered SiOxfilms depends on its deposition conditions; in this paper, this fact was employed to fabricate films with arbitrary refractive indices. A statistical study and a Genetic Algorithm are implemented that can determine the deposition conditions (including oxygen partial flow and pressure) for fabricating a film with an arbitrary refractive index in the range of 1.4-4.2. The method was experimentally shown to correctly determine the deposition conditions. The functionality of using the proposed method in fabricating optical components was further evaluated by fabricating a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) consisting of 4.5 pairs, whose refractive indices of the layers were determined by the proposed method. The DBR featured a high 95% reflection in a bandwidth of more than 270 nm, which can be categorized as a high-quality DBR. The advance of the proposed method is that the films are made from a single target source without making any physical changes in the target or substrate positions.
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Bragg mirrors rely on a multilayer structure of quarter-wavelength thin films of two dielectric materials with different refractive indices; they can also be fabricated using a single material with periodically varying pore gradient.
“A particular case of dielectric mirrors is represented by Bragg mirrors, whose architecture relies on a multilayer structure comprising quarter-wavelength thin films of two dielectric materials with different refractive indices ( n low and n high ). Bragg structures can also be fabricated using a single material in which the pore gradient varies periodically [233-235].”
From Metal Oxide Thin Films for Advanced Photonic Applications (2026) · cites this paper as [233]
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- Authors
- Afsharipour, E., Park, B., & Shafai, C.
- Affiliations
- University of Manitoba (CA)
- Venue
- IEEE photonics journal
- Published
- 2017-02
- Volume
- 9
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 1-16
- ISSN
- 1943-0647 (ISSN-L)
- 1943-0655
- OpenAlex
- W2571076176
- Cited by
- 9
- References
- 43
- Citations by year
- 2025: 3 · 2024: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 1 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 0.22
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- IEEE photonics journal (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Surfaces, Coatings and Films › Optical Coatings and Gratings
- Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Materials Chemistry › Advanced Materials and Semiconductor Technologies
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Semiconductor materials and devices
- Keywords
- silicon oxide thin films, refractive index tuning, RF reactive sputtering, deposition parameter optimization, genetic algorithm, distributed Bragg reflector, oxygen partial pressure, sputtering pressure, multilayer optical films
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