Radio frequency magnetron sputtering conducted in a high vacuum with a base pressure of 1×10-6 mbar was used to deposit ultrathin palladium films on Corning glass. The thickness of these films ranged from 0.4 to 13 nanometers. PdO films were produced after being post-annealed in a furnace at temperatures of 530 degrees Celsius in the presence of air. The results of an atomic force microscopy study showed that the material possessed a high crystalline quality with a low roughness. When looking at Tauc plots to determine the position of the direct optical band gap, the thicker films show a value that is relatively close to 2.2 eV. When the film thickness was reduced all the way down to 0.7 nm, a significant "blue shift" of more than 0.5 eV was observed. In order to provide a more in-depth understanding of the experiment, theoretical calculations based on the Hartree-Fock approximation as applied to an electron-hole system were performed in the framework of the effective mass approximation. The findings are regarded as empirical proof of the existence of quantum confinement effects.
Keywords: PdO; optical properties; potential morphing method; quantum confinement; thin films.