Morphological, electrical and optical properties of highly oriented undoped and doped zinc oxide and cadmium oxide films grown by atmospheric-pressure chemical vapor deposition

Morphological, electrical and optical properties of undoped and Ga-doped ZnO and undoped CdO films grown on sapphire (Al2O3) substrates by the atmospheric-pressure CVD method using Zn, Cd, H2O and GaCl3 as source materials were investigated. The influences of the deviation from the stoichiometric composition were clearly observed on photoluminescence (PL), photoluminescence excitation (PLE) and photoacoustic (PA) spectra of the undoped ZnO films. The carrier concentration n in the undoped ZnO film was found to be dominated by the hydrogen related donors rather than native defects. The Ga doping in ZnO film led to the degradation of surface flatness, the increase in carrier concentration n and the decrease in Hall mobility μ. With increasing carrier concentration n, the Ga-related neutral donor bound exciton line of the Ga-doped ZnO film shifted towards shorter wavelengths, accompanied by asymmetric broadening. This is probably due to the screening of the Coulomb potential by heavily introduced donors and free-electrons. Highly oriented CdO films with smooth surfaces were successfully grown on r-Al2O3 substrates. Transmittance values for the CdO/r-Al2O3 films were higher than 70% in the range of 700-2500 nm. Under the assumption that the reflectance is neglected, the direct and indirect optical gap energies of the CdO films determined from the transmittance spectra were 2.34-2.38 eV and 1.98-2.06 eV, respectively. PA measurements for the CdO films revealed that the tail states associated with the residual impurities and/or the structural defects reduce the direct optical gap energy. A maximum Hall mobility μ of 178 cm2/Vs was achieved on the CdO/r-Al2O3 film with the carrier concentration n of 4.2 × 1019 cm− 3.