Er-doped ZnO thin films grown by pulsed-laser deposition

Abstract

Crystalline erbium(Er)-doped zinc oxide thin films have been grown by pulsed-laser deposition and were analyzed by the complementary use of Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy, x-ray diffraction analysis, atomic force microscopy, and photoluminescence. The composition, structure, and surface morphology of films were studied, as a function of the growth conditions (temperature from 300 °C to 750 °C and oxygen pressure from 10−6 to 0.5 mbar) and Er-doping rate, and were correlated to the emission spectroscopy of Er in the infrared domain. While these studies lead to the determination of optimal conditions for the growth of high crystalline quality films, results of photoluminescence experiments show that the insertion of Er ions in the ZnO matrix does not follow a simple pattern. The Er ions are incorporated from two pathways, one population is found inside the crystallites and another one at the grain boundaries, as a consequence of the differences in valence and ionic radius of Zn and Er.

Epitaxial growth of copper oxide films by reactive cross-beam pulsed-laser deposition

“…This causes the surface free energy of this plane to diverge, while by comparison, the other prismatic planes have a lower surface free energy. That leads a high growth rate along the c-axis, and thus to a columnar growth for the ZnO films [20,21]. Such a columnar growth can be envisaged in the case of the (2 0 0) Cu 2 O polar plane on MgO.…”

Preparation and characterization of ZnO–TiO2 films obtained by sol-gel method

“…The effect of annealing procedures is almost negligible. The E g value of bulk ZnO is 3.3 eV [37]. The small decrease in the band gap values after heat treatment for the ZnO films might be attributed to the quantum confinement of the charge carriers in very fine nanocrystalline grains [38].…”

Synthesis and optical properties of Ce-doped ZnO hexagonal nanoplatelets

“…Due to its potential optoelectronic applications, nowadays rare earth [19][20][21] doped ZnO is an interesting field of study. Part of this interest lies in the shielded 4f levels of RE 3 + , which can make various well defined narrow optical transitions happen between the spin orbit levels split under the different manifolds weak crystal field.…”