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Effects of Substrate Pre-deposition Annealing and Deposition Parameters on the Properties of RF Sputter-deposited ZnO Films

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2012

T. N. Oder ,
M. McMaster ,
A. Smith ,
N. Velpukonda  and
D. Sternagle
T. N. Oder
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH 44555, USA
M. McMaster
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH 44555, USA
A. Smith
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH 44555, USA
N. Velpukonda
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH 44555, USA
D. Sternagle
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH 44555, USA
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Abstract

Zinc Oxide thin films were deposited on sapphire substrates by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering from an ultra-high purity ZnO solid target. The ZnO films were deposited on sapphire substrates heated in oxygen and/or in vacuum prior to deposition. Additional parameters investigated included the substrate temperature varied from 25 °C to 600 °C, the deposition gas pressure varied from 5 mTorr to 40 mTorr and the gas flow rate varied from 5 to 30 standard cubic centimeter per minute (sccm). The resulting films were annealed using a rapid thermal processor in N2 gas at 900 °C for 5 min. Analyses carried out using photoluminescence spectroscopy (PL) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements indicate that films deposited at 300 °C using Ar:O2 (1:1) had the best optical and microstructure qualities. Pre-heating the sapphire substrate in oxygen prior to deposition was found to create a smoother sapphire surface, and this produced a ZnO film with greatly improved qualities. This film had a luminescence peak at 3.362 eV with a full-width-half maximum (FWHM) value of 15.3 meV when measured at 11 K. The XRD 2θ-scans had peaks at 34.4° with the best FWHM value of only 0.10°. Production of high quality ZnO materials is a necessary step towards realizing highly conductive p-type doped ZnO materials which is currently a major goal in research efforts on ZnO.

Keywords

sputteringsemiconductingluminescence
Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 1394: Symposium M – Oxide Semiconductors–Defects, Growth and Device Fabrication , 2012 , mrsf11-1394-m13-22
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2012

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