Low-Temperature Growth of Zinc Oxide Films from Zinc Acetate Solution Using Plasma-Assisted Mist Chemical Vapor Deposition

Abstract

Zinc oxide (ZnO) film deposition using a plasma-assisted mist chemical vapor deposition (CVD) with an inductively-coupled plasma source has been performed. The effects of the plasma exposure on film properties have been investigated with substrate location as a parameter. With decreasing the distance from antenna to substrate, the X-ray diffraction (XRD) results showed evident peaks of ZnO(0002), indicating that highly c-axis oriented films formed at low substrate temperature below 200°C. These results exhibit that the direct irradiation of argon/oxygen mixture plasma has enough potential for the crystallization of ZnO films. The effects of the concentration of a precursor in solutions on ZnO film deposition have been investigated. With decreasing the concentration of a precursor in solutions, the grain size of the ZnO films was small and the distribution of grain size was narrow. These results indicate that the structure control of ZnO film surface is available due to the concentration of a precursor in solutions.