Walters, G; (2012) Characteristics of aerosol assisted and conventional chemical vapour deposition of metal oxide thin films on glass, with or without metal dopants. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis describes the characteristics and properties of aerosol assisted chemical vapour deposition (AACVD) and conventional atmospheric chemical vapour deposition (CVD) metal oxide thin films on glass substrates with or without metal, Au, Ag, Cu or Al dopants. Host metal oxide matrices including, ZnO and TiO2 with various dopants are known to give specific physical and optical properties desired by many industries and have various potential properties e.g. thermochromic, photochromic and are known as ‘intelligent coatings’. The AACVD synthesis technique was used singularly or in combination with APCVD to achieve thin films on glass substrates either in static or dynamic situations with a range of temperatures (300-600 ºC). Computational fluid dynamics (CFD), Fluent™ software, was used in a 2-equation, numerical study of fluid flow, velocity, particle trajectory, evaporation and thermophoretic effects on six combined AACVD/APCVD vertical reactor head designs; two designs were then selected as experimental prototypes and tested on a pilot rig chosen to more accurately simulate commercial Float glass production. Various functionalities of the thin films were analysed using transmittance/reflectance spectroscopy, RZ ink and stearic acid photocatalysis tests, resistivity and a variety of analytical techniques including SEM, XRD and XPS were used. The main findings include the effect of noble metal dopants (particularly Au and Ag), substrate synthesis temperature, fluid flow and droplet size have on the physical and chemical properties such as the morphology, crystallinity, water surface contact angle of the host metal oxide matrices. The nebulised AACVD droplet size, for solvent systems, are critical for deposition of the precursor chemicals onto the surface of the substrate, CFD particle trajectory of nebulised AACVD methanol droplets were calculated to be 1 order of magnitude too small to overcome the main forces of influence aerodynamic drag and at higher synthesis temperature evaporation.

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