Study of zinc oxide thin film characteristics

This paper presents the characterization of ZnO thin films with the thickness of 8nm, 30nm, and 200nm. The thin films were prepared using sol-gel method and has been deposited onto different substrate of silicon wafer, glass and quartz. The thin films were annealed at 400, 500 and 600 degrees C. By using UV-Vis, the optical transmittance measurement were recorded by using a single beam spectrophotometer in the wavelength 250nm to 800nm. However, the transmittance in the visible range is hardly influenced by the film thickness, substrate used and annealed temperature and the averages are all above 80%. On surface morphology observed by AFM and FESEM, the results show that the increase of film thickness and annealed temperature will increase the mean grain size, surface-to-volume ration and RMS roughness. Besides that, higher annealing temperature cause the crystalline quality to gradually improve and the wurtzite structure of ZnO can be seen more clearly. Nonetheless, the substrate used had no effect on surface morphology, yet the uniformity of deposition on silicon wafer is better than glass and quartz.