Structural and optical properties of La-doped ZnO films prepared by magnetron sputtering

La-doped ZnO films were prepared by RF magnetron sputtering using different composition powder compacted targets (0, 1, 2, 3 and 5 at.%). All films show a preferred c-axis growth orientation. Furthermore, the (002) diffraction peak shifts to a small angle and the full-width at half-maximum augments with increasing La concentration up to 2 at.%, which indicate that a small quantity of La atoms are incorporated into the ZnO lattice. The average transmittance in the visible range is over 80%, and a blue shift of the absorption edge is observed. With increasing La concentration, the band gap of ZnO films evaluated by the linear fitting linearly increases from 3.270 to 3.326 eV. In the photoluminescence spectra, a strong violet emission peak and a weak green emission band can be observed. The former is due to the electron transition between the defect energy levels, associated with the interfacial traps existing at the ZnO grain boundaries, and valence band. The latter could be ascribed to crystal defects related to oxygen vacancies.