Study on cerium oxide film for high temperature oxygen sensor fabrication

The cerium oxide film is grown by magnetron sputtering, which can be used to fabricate a new type of high temperature oxygen sensor. The film is studied with XPS (X-ray photoelectron spectrometry), AFM (atomic force microscope) and XRD (X-ray diffraction). The results show that the stoichiometry of the film can be controlled by varying the flow ratio of argon to oxygen. XRD and AFM reveal that after annealing in air, a cubic CaF2 lattice structure is formed and the grain size depends on annealing temperature and film thickness.