Hot-filament metal oxide deposition (HFMOD): a novel method for depositing thin films of metallic oxides

this short report describes a novel method for the synthesis of metal oxide thin films. the experimental setup consists of a metal filament installed inside a vacuum chamber. the filament can be heated by an ac power supply while oxygen is admitted into the chamber using a mass flowmeter. from reactions between oxygen and the heated metal filament, volatile oxide species, mexoy, where me is the metal, can be formed, condensing on a nearby substrate. we have observed that thin films of wxoy and moxoy can be satisfactorily deposited by this novel method. although several techniques were used to characterize the oxides, this note emphasizes the results obtained by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (xps).