Sol–gel production of wrinkled fluorine doped zinc oxide through hydrofluride acid

Wrinkled ZnO:F (FZO) thin films have been derived through sol–gel deposition process, using a mixture of zinc acetate aluminum chloride, hydrofluoric acid and isopropanol. It is found that the deposited FZO thin films are highly transparent with sheet resistivity of around 0.07 Ω cm. Scanning electron microscopy images and XRD measurements indicated that these FZO thin films are wrinkled with a preferential growth in the c-axis orientation. Electrical measurements revealed that all of the deposited films are n-type. The best figure of merit can be achieved by using the precursors with 6 at% of F. Results of this study show the F incorporation is one of the effective factors to optimize the FZO thin films. As a demonstration crystalline silicon-based solar cells were fabricated using FZO derived from this study.