Preparation and properties of nitrogen doped p-type zinc oxide films by reactive magnetron sputtering

A nitrogen doped zinc oxide (ZnO:N) film was deposited on a quartz substrate at 773 K by reactive radio-frequency (rf) magnetron sputtering using mixture of nitrogen and oxygen as sputtering gas. Hall measurement results indicate that the ZnO:N film behaves p-type conduction after annealed at 923 K, which has the lower room temperature resistivity of 2.9 Ω cm, Hall mobility of 18 cm2/Vs and carrier concentration of 1.3 × 1017 cm−3, respectively. Compositional analysis confirmed the nitrogen (N) is incorporated into the ZnO and the N occupies two chemical states in the ZnO:N. The ZnO:N film has high optical quality and displays the stronger near band edge (NBE) emission in the temperature-dependent photoluminescence spectrum, the acceptor energy level was estimated to be located 110 meV above the valence band. Mechanism of the p-type conductivity of the ZnO:N film was discussed in the present work.