Structural, optical, electrical and magnetic studies of ultrasonically sprayed ZnO thin films doped with vanadium

• The effect of V doping on the physical properties of the ZnO films was reported.
• The XRD results indicated that all the films were polycrystalline.
• The optical band gap of ZnO films slightly increased with V incorporation.
• The V doping decreased the electrical conductivity of the undoped ZnO films.
• VSM results revealed that all films are ferromagnetic.

Undoped and vanadium (V) doped (3, 6, 9 and 12 mol%) ZnO thin films were deposited onto glass substrates at the substrate temperature of 400 ± 5 °C by ultrasonic spray pyrolysis technique. Depending on the doping concentration, the variation in the structural, morphological, elemental analysis, and optical, electrical and magnetic properties were investigated by means of X-ray diffractometer (XRD), atomic force microscope (AFM) and scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDS), UV–vis spectrophotometer, current-voltage (I-V) measurements and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), respectively. The X-ray diffraction studies have revealed that all the films were polycrystalline with hexagonal wurtzite crystal structure. The transmittance in the visible region varied between 55 and 75% and it was observed that transmittance of deposited films decreased after incorporation of vanadium. The electrical resistivity studies for all the films were carried out by using the two-probe method and it was seen that the electrical resistivity of the ZnO films decreased sharply as a consequence of V doping. The VSM measurements showed that all deposited films have intrinsic ferromagnetic behavior at room temperature and it was also found that the ferromagnetic behavior of all the films was obviously affected by doping with vanadium.