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Highly c-axis oriented crystal growth induced giant unusual saturable absorption behavior in wet chemically grown ZnO thin films

Wet-chemical sol-gel spin coating technique was considered to fabricate ZnO thin films on bare glass substrates with different thickness values (30 nm, 90 nm, 110 nm, 150 nm). The XRD reflections showed a transition from semi-polar crystal growth orientation to polar crystal growth orientation when...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physica. E, Low-dimensional systems & nanostructures Low-dimensional systems & nanostructures, 2019-03, Vol.107, p.47-53
Main Authors: K.M., Sandeep, Bhat, Shreesha, Kumar, Prasad, Maidur, Shivaraj R., Serrao, Felcy Jyothi, S.M., Dharmaprakash
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Wet-chemical sol-gel spin coating technique was considered to fabricate ZnO thin films on bare glass substrates with different thickness values (30 nm, 90 nm, 110 nm, 150 nm). The XRD reflections showed a transition from semi-polar crystal growth orientation to polar crystal growth orientation when the thickness was reduced to 30 nm. The nonlinear characteristics of prepared nano-films were quantized by performing open aperture and closed aperture Z-scan measurements under a continuous wavelength regime. The open aperture Z-scan transmittance curves showed a remarkable transition from normalized valley to normalized peak in 30 nm thick ZnO film. The presence of normalized valley and peak were attributed to reverse saturable absorption (RSA) and saturable absorption (SA) behavior respectively. The RSA behavior was attributed to well known two-photon absorption (TPA) mechanisms and the SA behavior was due to the reduction in electron-hole wave function overlapping along c-axis. The closed aperture Z-scan measurement of 30 nm thick ZnO film revealed the violation of two parabolic band (TPB) and Kramer-Kronig relations by exhibiting self-focusing mechanism. The self-focusing mechanism was attributed to thermal effects due to the smaller thickness of ZnO. However, self-defocusing behavior was observed in 90 nm, 110 nm, and 150 nm thick ZnO films. [Display omitted] •ZnO thin films of different thickness values are prepared using sol-gel spin coating technique.•Dominant single c-axis oriented ZnO exhibit SA behavior.•RSA is observed in semipolar crystal growth oriented ZnO films.•Thermo-optic effects are observed under continuous wavelength laser.
ISSN:1386-9477
1873-1759
DOI:10.1016/j.physe.2018.11.031