Effects of annealing temperature on ZnO and AZO films prepared by sol–gel technique

► Low cost sol–gel spin coating technique was used to fabricate the ZnO films. ► Influences of annealing temperature on the structural and optical properties of the ZnO and AZO films were investigated. ► The experimental results reveal that the annealing treatment affects the structural and optical...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied surface science 2012-10, Vol.258 (24), p.9604-9609
Main Authors: Ng, Zi-Neng, Chan, Kah-Yoong, Tohsophon, Thanaporn
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aluminum
Annealing
Atomic force microscopy
AZO
Condensed matter: electronic structure, electrical, magnetic, and optical properties
Condensed matter: structure, mechanical and thermal properties
Cross-disciplinary physics: materials science
rheology
Diffraction
Exact sciences and technology
Optical properties
Optoelectronic devices
Physics
Sol gel process
Sol–gel spin coating
Thermal annealing
Zinc oxide
ZnO films
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Summary:► Low cost sol–gel spin coating technique was used to fabricate the ZnO films. ► Influences of annealing temperature on the structural and optical properties of the ZnO and AZO films were investigated. ► The experimental results reveal that the annealing treatment affects the structural and optical properties of the ZnO films. Zinc oxide (ZnO) films have the potential in the emerging thin-film technologies which can be employed in thin-film solar cells, transistors, sensors and other optoelectronic devices. In this work, low cost sol–gel spin-coating technique was used to synthesize the ZnO films. The influences of annealing temperature on the structural and optical properties of ZnO and aluminum doped ZnO (AZO) films were investigated. The structural properties of the ZnO films such as surface morphology and crystallinity were determined using atomic force microscopy (AFM) and X-ray diffractometry (XRD), respectively. The optical properties of the ZnO films were characterized by the ultraviolet–visible (UV–vis) spectroscopy and Tauc method was adopted to estimate the optical gap. The experimental results reveal that the thermal annealing treatment affects the properties of the ZnO films. The effects of the low range annealing temperature on the sol–gel ZnO films addressed in this investigation will be discussed in this paper.
ISSN:0169-4332
1873-5584
DOI:10.1016/j.apsusc.2012.05.156