  Size-property relations in plasma-modified ZnO thin films have been
investigated as a function of plasma treatment duration. The correlations
between crystallite sizes and the morphological characteristics of films have
been extracted on the basis of the frontier computational analysis of the
scanning probe microscope (SPM) data matrices. The nanocluster structure of
oxide films have been studied in detail with high accuracy. The strong
plasma-induced changes in crystallite sizes have been interpreted as a
size-structure phase transition. Direct measurements of X-ray diffraction and
optical transmittance spectra have confirmed the results obtained with
computational approaches. The discovery size-morphology correlations in thin
oxide films might open new avenues ultimately leading towards deeper insight
into unsolved problems of evaluation of optimal technological conditions for
thin oxide film designing.
