Abstract
Zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films were grown on silicon (100) substrate using radio frequency (RF) sputtering under various processing parameters including deposition time and annealing temperature. A series of characterization techniques including X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning acoustic microscopy (SAM) have been used to analyze the crystallinity and crystal orientation, structural morphology, surface roughness, and acoustic properties of these films. In particular, quantitative analysis of elastic wave propagation in ZnO thin films by scanning acoustic microscopy has been performed for the first time in the present work. It has been shown that the propagation properties of acoustic waves on the surface of ZnO thin films strongly depend on film thickness, crystallinity, and surface roughness. The dispersion properties of surface acoustic waves (SAWs) are observed as a function of ZnO film thickness. The velocities of SAWs range from 5328.3 m/s to 4245.7 m/s with increasing film thickness from 32.5 nm to 2.04 μm, while smoother surface contributes to faster propagation of SAWs.
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