Growth of Nanocolumnar TiO Bilayer by Direct Current Reactive Magnetron Sputtering in Glancing-Angle Deposition Configuration for High-Quality Electron Transport Layer.

The electron transport layer (ETL) plays a crucial role in solar cell technology, particularly in perovskite solar cells (PSCs), where nanostructured TiO films have been investigated as superior ETLs compared to compact TiO. In this study, we explored the nanocolumnar growth of TiO in the anatase phase for bilayer thin films by DC reactive magnetron sputtering (MS) technique and glancing-angle deposition (GLAD). For the growth of the compact TiO layer, it was found that the crystalline quality of the films is strongly dependent on the sputtering power, and the samples deposited at 120 and 140 W are those with the best crystalline quality.