The growth of nanoscale ZnO films by pulsed-spray evaporation chemical vapor deposition and their structural, electric and optical properties

Great interest in nanoscale thin films (sub-100 nm) has been stimulated by the developing demands of functional devices. In this paper, nanoscale zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films were deposited on glass substrates at 300 °C by pulsed-spray evaporation chemical vapor deposition. Scanning electron micrographs indicate uniform surface morphologies composed of nanometer-sized spherical particles. The growth kinetics and growth mode are studied and the relationship between the film thickness and the electric properties with respect to the growth mode is interpreted. X-ray diffraction shows that all ZnO films grown by this process were crystallized in a hexagonal structure and highly oriented with their c-axes perpendicular to the plane of the substrate. Optical measurements show transparencies above 85% in the visible spectral range for all films. The absorbance in the UV spectral range respects well the Beer-Lambert law, enabling an accurate optical thickness measurement, and the absorption coefficient was measured for a selected wavelength. The measured band gap energies exhibit an almost constant value of 3.41 eV for all films with different thicknesses, which attributed to the thickness-independent crystallite size.