Hybrid Flame‐Assisted Plasma‐Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition Strategy for Scalable and Structurally Tunable ZrO ₂ Thin Films

ABSTRACT Zirconium dioxide (ZrO 2 ) thin films are critical materials owing to their thermal stability, mechanical durability, and optical transparency enabling applications in photonic, sensing, and electronic devices. However, achieving uniform deposition via plasma‐enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PE‐CVD) has remained challenging due to poor nucleation on untreated substrates. In this work, we demonstrated a hybrid strategy that integrated flame spray pyrolysis (FSP) seeding prior to PE‐CVD to enhance nucleation. We systematically investigated the effect of seed composition, seeding duration, substrate type, growth parameters (temperature and plasma power), and post‐deposition calcination on film morphology and structure. We found that oxide‐based seeds (ZrO 2 , ZnO) promote uniform, continuous, and dense films, whereas noble metals (Au, Pt) lead to sparse and discontinuous nucleation. Under optimized conditions, we obtained a uniform nanostructured ZrO 2 film with particle sizes of 120 ± 0.1 nm and up to 89% transmittance. X‐ray diffraction confirmed crystalline tetragonal ZrO 2 with enhanced grain orientation. The hybrid FSP–PE‐CVD strategy enables uniform, transparent ZrO 2 thin films with controllable grain size and phase composition. This approach provides a robust platform for scalable oxide film fabrication where optical transparency and morphological precision are critical.