The structure and electron energy loss near edge structure of tungsten oxide thin films prepared by pulsed cathodic arc deposition and plasma-assisted pulsed magnetron sputtering

The microstructure and energy-loss near-edge structure (ELNES) of pulsed cathodic arc and pulsed magnetron sputtered WO3 thin films were investigated. It was found that the cathodic arc deposited material consisted of the alpha-WO3 phase with a high degree of crystallinity. In contrast, the magnetron sputtered material was highly disordered making it difficult to determine its phase. A self-consistent real space multiple scattering approach was used to calculate the NES of the various phases of WO3. Each phase was found to exhibit a unique NES allowing different phases of WO3 to be identified. The real space approach also allowed the origin of the main features in the NES to be investigated as the cluster size increased. The calculated NES for the room temperature gamma-WO3 was found to compare well to previous X-ray absorption spectra and to NES obtained by full-potential band structure calculation