Enhanced electrical properties of ZnO transparent conducting films prepared by electron beam annealing

Comparative Study of ZnO Thin Films Grown on Quartz Glass and Sapphire (001) Substrates by Means of Magnetron Sputtering and High-Temperature Annealing

“…As shown in Figure 5a,b, the optical band gap values of the as-received ZnO thin films grown on the quartz glass and sapphire (001) substrates were calculated to be 3.19 eV and 3.08 eV, respectively. Clearly, the optical band gap of the former was somewhat larger than that of the latter, which is attributed to the decrease in band bending effect at the grain boundaries that originate from the size increase of the ZnO nanograins [25]. PL spectra were employed to investigate the emission characteristics of the as-received ZnO thin films grown on the quartz glass and sapphire (001) substrates, as illustrated in Figure 6.…”

“…More clearly, the NBE is the recombination of free excitons through an exciton-exciton collision progress. There is a blue shift in the UV peak According to a previous report, for the ZnO thin films, the optical band gap, E g , can be calculated by means of the following equation [25,35]:…”

“…Of course, cost control is also considered to be a key factor for the applications of the ZnO thin films. In the past decades, ZnO thin films have been synthesized by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) [22], molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) [23], pulsed laser deposition (PLD) [24], magnetron sputtering [11], thermal evaporation [25], sol-gel method [26], etc. [27,28].…”

Crystallization of ZnO thin films without polymer substrate deformation via thermal dissipation annealing method for next generation wearable devices

“…22,23 Additionally, the excimer laser and electron beam annealing method can effectively anneal ZnO thin lms at low temperatures, and our group has devised a novel annealing method named the counterpoise-assisted annealing (CAA) method, in which an external force is applied to the thin lms by placing a counterpoise on the ZnO thin lms, to anneal the sol-gel derived ZnO thin lms without bending of polymer substrates. [24][25][26] However, to fabricate ZnObased transparent and exible optoelectronic devices, ZnO thin lms have to be deposited onto transparent and exible polymer substrates that exhibit high transparency in the visible region and high exibility at room temperature. For example, the use of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) and annealing processes at high temperatures are not possible due to low glass transition temperature (130 C) and melting point (200 C) of polymer substrates.…”

Decreased Surface Photovoltage of ZnO Photoanode Films via Optimal Annealing Temperature for Enhanced Photoelectrochemical Performance

“…Wang et al [21] found that the improved PEC performance of ZnO nanowires (NWs) was mainly attributed to the larger depleted width in ZnO NWs caused by annealing. Further, the carrier concentration of ZnO films by electron beam annealing is about 2~3 orders of magnitude higher than that of unannealed ZnO thin films [22]. However, there is still a lack of in-depth understanding about the change in interfacial electronic structure for the enhanced PEC performance caused by different annealing temperatures.…”