Study of bactericidal efficiency of magnetron sputtered TiO2 films deposited at varying oxygen partial pressure

TiO₂ thin films have been deposited at different Ar:O₂ gas ratios (20:80,70:30,50:50,and 40:60 in sccm) by rf reactive magnetron sputtering at a constant power of 200 W. The formation of TiO₂ was confirmed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The oxygen percentage in the films was found to increase with an increase in oxygen partial pressure during deposition. The oxygen content in the film was estimated from XPS measurement. Band gap of the films was calculated from the UV-Visible transmittance spectra. Increase in oxygen content in the films showed substantial increase in optical band gap from 2.8 eV to 3.78 eV. The Ar:O₂ gas ratio was found to affect the particle size of the films determined by a transmission electron microscope (TEM). The particle size was found to be varying between 10 and 25 nm. The bactericidal efficiency of the deposited films was investigated using Escherichia coli (E. coli) cells under 1 h UV irradiation. The growth of E. coli cells was estimated through the Optical Density measurement by UV-Visible absorbance spectra. The qualitative analysis of the bactericidal efficiency of the deposited films after UV irradiation was observed through SEM. A correlation between the optical band gap, particle size and bactericidal efficiency of the TiO₂ films at different argon:oxygen gas ratio has been studied.