Impact of Annealing on Metal–Oxygen Hybridization Process in Zinc Ferrite Thin Films Studied by Angle Dependent Soft X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Herein, we report the impact of thermal annealing on the metal (Fe-3 d )-oxygen (O-2 p ) hybridization in zinc ferrite thin fi lms using the angle-dependent near-edge X-ray absorption fi ne structure (NEXAFS) technique. Zinc ferrite thin fi lms of thickness ~ 100 nm are grown on MgO (200) substrates using radio frequency sputtering. Further, these as-grown fi lms are annealed at temperatures 200, 400, and 600 °C in an air atmosphere to improve the crystallinity of the fi lms. NEXAFS studies on Fe L 2,3 -edge and O K -edge reveal the importance of thermal annealing on the modifi cation of the electronic structure of zinc ferrite fi lms. Angle-dependent NEXAFS studies on Fe L 2,3 -edge suggest that the variation in electronic structure caused by the metal–oxygen hybridization in Zinc Ferrite is infl uenced by the fi lm’s crystallinity through the annealing process. Further, the nature of metal–oxygen hybridization in zinc ferrite is confi rmed by the O K pre-edge angle-dependent NEXAFS studies.