Room temperature growth of high quality ZnO thin film on sapphire substrates

The growth of zinc oxide (ZnO) films on sapphire (001) substrate at room temperature using the RF magnetron sputtering was analyzed. The RF power for changing the energy of the collision, which was between metal atoms and reactive gas molecules on the substrate, was varied and thus obtained high quality ZnO films. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) using Cu Ka1 radiation were used to analyze the structural properties of the films. It was observed from SEM and XRD that the c-axis-oriented and highly crystalline ZnO thin films were grown even at room temperature by using RF sputtering method.