Structural and optical properties of the polycrystalline ZnO films synthesized via oxidative annealing of ZnSe/YSZ heterostructures

We synthesized polycrystalline ZnO films via oxidative annealing of ZnSe/yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) heterostructures and investigated the influence of the processing conditions on their structural and optical properties. While ZnO films synthesized using low-temperature annealing (500–600 °C) did not show any preferential orientation, highly textured films were obtained at high temperatures (700–800 °C). In addition, we demonstrated that prolonged high-temperature annealing (3 h at 800 °C) effectively eliminated point defects, as was evident from the increased band edge to deep-level emission intensity ratio.