Study of ZnO:Zn Phosphors Prepared by Sol-gel and Ionimplantation Techniques

ZnO thin films were firstly deposited on glass substrates by the sol-gel process, and then Zn ions with energy of 56 keV were implanted into the ZnO films to a dose of 1×1017 cm-2. The effects of ion implantation on the structural and optical properties of the ZnO films were investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), photoluminescence (PL) and optical transmittance measurements. The results showed that the as-deposited films had hexagonal wurtzite structure with high c-axis preferred orientation and (002) peak disappeared after ion implantation. Both the near band edge (NBE) excitonic UV emission at 390 nm and the defect related deep level emission (DLE) centered at 470 nm in the visible region were greatly decreased after Zn ion implantation. The optical band gap redshifted from 3.10 to 3.04 eV after ion implantation.