Dopant induced modifications in the physical properties of sprayed ZnO:In films

Abstract

Indium-doped zinc oxide (IZO) films were prepared by the spray pyrolysis technique. The effect of gradual incorporation of indium cations on the structural, electrical, and compositional properties of IZO films was studied in detail. It was observed that even a small addition of indium modifies the preferred growth of IZO film from the [002] direction to the [101] direction. Such a modification in growth pattern is a result of more nucleating centers created by indium doping. Indium dopant improves the electrical properties of the films. The carrier concentration depends mainly on the indium dopant level while the mobility is affected by the changes in crystal orientation that take place due to addition of dopants. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy results show that indium doping does not lead to any stoichiometric changes in the IZO films and the dopant incorporation in the film is linearly proportional to that in the solution.

Effect of indium doping on zinc oxide films prepared by chemical spray pyrolysis technique

“…With the increase in indium doping percentage, the intensity of the peak corresponding to the plane (0 0 2) is found to decrease and that corresponding to (1 0 1) and (1 0 0) plane increase. Similar behaviour has been reported by other workers (Goyal et al 1993;Delgado et al 2000;Yoshida et al 2000). The results of IZO allow us to state that there is a predominant growth of ZnO microcrystal with the c-axis tilted around 58 degree towards the plane of substrate at higher doping while for lightly doped samples c-axis is perpendicular to the plane of the substrate (Major et al 1986).…”

Properties of Dy-doped ZnO nanocrystalline thin films prepared by pulsed laser deposition

“…Similar behaviors have been reported by other authors for ZnO films doped by 1 at.% of In, Fe or Cu. [31,32,33].…”

“…Compared to undoped ZnO, impurity-doped ZnO has a lower resistivity and better stability. With this aim, a lot of elements have been used as dopant for ZnO, such as B, Al, Ga, In (Group III A), Si, Ge (Group IVA), Ti, Zr, Hf (Group IV B), F(VII A) [3][4][5][6][7][8][9], Sc, Y [10], etc. Currently, impurity-doped zinc oxides thin films are replacing indium-tinoxide (ITO) thin films in the area of transparent conducting electrodes due to their stability in hydrogen plasma [11].…”

Optical Properties of Annealed ZnO Thin Films Fabricated by Pulsed Laser Deposition

“…The extinction coefficient (k) is calculated using the following relation and is shown in Fig. 8 k = αλ 4π (6) where α is the absorption coefficient and λ is the wave length of light [14]. The low values of the extinction coefficient for the annealed films in the visible and near infrared region show their surface smoothness and high transmittance [23].…”

“…It is a non-toxic, n-type semiconductor, direct wide band gap material (E g =3.3 eV at room temperature) with high optical transparency in the visible and near infrared region. Furthermore, it is an extensively used material in different applications such as gas sensors, UV resistive coatings, piezoelectric devices, varistors, surface acoustic wave devices, transparent conductive oxide electrodes [2,3], short wavelength light emitting devices and optical or display devices [5,6]. ZnO films can be prepared using different techniques such as molecular beam epitaxy, chemical spray pyrolysis, vacuum evaporation, sputtering and pulsed laser deposition (PLD) [7].…”