Investigations of nanocrystalline SnS films' surface morphology modification during inductively coupled argon plasma sputtering

In this work the investigations of the morphology, structure and chemical composition of nanocrystalline SnS films grown by hot wall deposition method on glass substrates before and after high-density low-pressure inductively coupled argon plasma sputtering were performed using scanning electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction analysis, Raman spectroscopy, and energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy. The phenomenon of the surface smoothing for the SnS films with petal-like nanocrystallites during plasma treatment is described and the low sputtering rate for the studied films is discussed. (paper)