AVS 52nd International Symposium
    Electronic Materials and Processing Tuesday Sessions
       Session EM-TuA

Paper EM-TuA1
Expanding Thermal Plasma Deposited ZnO Films: Effect of Al Doping on the Thin Film Growth

Tuesday, November 1, 2005, 2:00 pm, Room 309

Session: Growth and Characterization of ZnO
Presenter: I. Volintiru, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Authors: I. Volintiru, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
M. Creatore, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
J.L. Linden, TNO Science and Industry, The Netherlands
M.C.M. Van De Sanden, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Correspondent: Click to Email
Zinc oxide (ZnO) films have been extensively studied in the past decade due to their advantages over other transparent conductive oxides (TCOs) such as large exciton binding energy, possibility of wet chemical etching, non-toxic precursors, and low-cost production. For specific applications, a good control of the ZnO film electrical and optical properties, as well as the surface morphology (e.g. high roughness needed for light trapping within solar cells) is necessary. In this work, both undoped and Al-doped ZnO films are deposited on crystalline Si and glass substrates using an argon-fed expanding thermal plasma in which oxygen, diethylzinc (and trimethylaluminium for Al doping) are admixed downstream. The in-situ real-time spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) performed on undoped ZnO point out towards a linear roughness development (about 10% of the film thickness) starting from 10 nm film thickness. Moreover, both AFM and X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements indicate a polycrystalline film growth above 10 nm. The influence of Al doping on the ZnO film electro-optical properties, surface morphology and crystallinity obtained from Hall, in-situ SE, AFM and XRD, respectively, will be presented.