Development of automated spray pyrolysis setup for chemical vapour deposition like growth of thin solid films

This paper presents a simple electronic interface for spray pyrolysis to deposit high quality thin solid films. The exhibited electronic circuit with the Arduino based microcontroller is acting as the interface between the primary process parameters and the computer running National Instruments{®} LabVIEW{®}. The proposed setup and deposition flow achieve a reproducible, repeatable, and uniform deposition of thin films through the spray pyrolysis technique, which improves the conventional spray pyrolysis technique. The conventional spray nozzle was replaced by the therapeutic aerosol nebulizer, a cost viable replacement, for uniform, smooth, chemical vapor deposition (CVD)-like deposition. The efficacy of the automated nebulizer spray pyrolysis (n-SP) setup was demonstrated by depositing fluorine doped tin oxide (SnO2:F), zinc oxide (ZnO) and zinc sulfide (ZnS) thin films and also by comparing the characterization results of the films with the literature. Results suggest that the proposed automated nebulizer spray pyrolysis setup has the ability to change the commercial production of device quality thin films from complex chemical vapor deposition to cost-effective, simple and automated nebulizer spray pyrolysis method.