Chemical Solution Deposition of Functional Oxide Thin Films

This is the first text to cover all aspects of solution processed functional oxide thin-films. Chemical Solution Deposition (CSD) comprises all solution based thin- film deposition techniques, which involve chemical reactions of precursors during the formation of the oxide films, i. e. sol-gel type routes, metallo-organic decomposition routes, hybrid routes, etc. While the development of sol-gel type processes for optical coatings on glass by silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide dates from the mid-20th century, the first CSD derived electronic oxide thin films, such as lead zirconate titanate, were prepared in the 1980’s. Since then CSD has emerged as a highly flexible and cost-effective technique for the fabrication of a very wide variety of functional oxide thin films. Application areas include, for example, integrated dielectric capacitors, ferroelectric random access memories, pyroelectric infrared detectors, piezoelectric micro-electromechanical systems, antireflective coatings, optical filters, conducting-, transparent conducting-, and superconducting layers, luminescent coatings, gas sensors, thin film solid-oxide fuel cells, and photoelectrocatalytic solar cells. In the appendix detailed “cooking recipes” for selected material systems are offered.