Investigation on microstructural and opto-electrical properties of Zr-doped SnO2 thin films for Al/Zr:SnO2/p-Si Schottky barrier diode application

Herein, the fabrication of novel pure and Zr-doped SnO2 (Zr@SnO2) films via sol-gel spin coating process for Schottky barrier diode (SBD) application has been reported. Phase and size analysis were carried out through X-ray diffraction and Scherrer rule was used to determine crystallite size, which is noticed between 2 and 6 nm. The SEM study reveals that the fabricated films contain very fine sphere-like grains. The optical transmittance of Zr@SnO2 thin films reveals that the grown films possess high transmittance which is good for optoelectronics. The values of energy gap for all Zr@SnO2 films were estimated between 3.90 and 3.96 eV. The dc conductivity analysis showed that SnO2 films possess higher electrical conductivity at 8 wt% of Zr. The barrier heights (phi(B)) and ideality factor (n) of the fabricated SBDs were calculated from both J-V and Cheung's method. Better performance was noticed for Zr (8 wt%):SnO2/p-Si SBD.