Optical and electrical properties of p-type ZnO fabricated by NH3 plasma post-treated ZnO thin films

In this paper, a simple method is reported to obtain nitrogen-doped p-ZnO film. In this method NH3 plasma, generated in a plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition system, was employed to treat ZnO thin film. By Hall-effect measurement, a p-type conductivity was observed for the treated film with the hole density of 2.2 × 1016 cm−3. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) results confirmed that nitrogen was incorporated into ZnO film during the treatment process to occupy the oxygen positions. In low temperature photoluminescence spectra, an emission peak corresponding to acceptor-donor pair was observed. From this emission peak we calculated the N-related acceptor binding energy to be 130 meV.