Microstructural characterization of hierarchical structured surfaces by atomic force microscopy

Abstract

In this work, we evaluate the hierarchical surface topography of reactively sputtered nanocrystalline Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 and TiO2 thin films as well as plasma-treated antireflective PET films by means of determining the fractal dimension and power spectral density (PSD) of surface topography recorded by atomic force microscopy (AFM). Local fractal dimension was obtained using the triangulation method. The PSDs of all samples were fitted to the k-correlation model (also called ABC model) valid for a self-affine surface topography. Fractal analysis of AFM images was shown to be an appropriate and easy to use tool for the characterization of hierarchical nanostructures. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.