Fabrication and Study of ZnO thin Films using Thermal Evaporation Technique

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Department of Physics, College of Education for Pure Science, Ibn Al-Haitham, University of Baghdad, Baghdad, Iraq.

Abstract

In this study, thin film Zinc oxide (ZnO) deposited by thermal evaporation techniques on unheated glass substrates. The findings of X-ray diffraction (XRD) show that the ZnO films are amorphous before annealing. The subsequent diffraction patterns demonstrate that the films crystalline into polycrystalline mixed Tetragonal α-ZnO compounds and Orthorhombic ß-ZnO compounds. Atomic power microscope (AFM) shows that the ZnO films are of a large homogeneous surface. The median crystallite size is calculated from XRD data, which are increased for all thickness with an increasing ringing temperature and are less than the AFM data. The findings of the optical properties show that with rising annealing temperature for all thicknesses, the transmittance decreases. ZnO film shows transmittance that exceeds 95% in the IR radiation area of the spectrum at the lower thickness of 60 nm annealed at 523 K for 2 hr, but decreases to 87% percent with increasing annealing temperatures, although ZnO films with thicknesses of 130 nm annealed at 723 K for 2 hr have a transmittance of 94 % and 88 % in the IR region, but decreases High transmission in the IR area reveals that ZnO films are good materials for agricultural applications. All the prepared ZnO-thin films were n-type semiconductors and it is known that the concentration of the carriers (n) and the conductivity (σ) increased with an ever-greater annealing temperature, while their mobility (μ) and resistivity (ρ) is reduced with an increase in the annealing temperature.

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