Charge Compensated (Al, N) Co-Doped Zinc Oxide (ZnO) Films for Photoelectrochemical Application

Abstract

ZnO thin films with significantly reduced bandgaps were synthesized by doping N and co-doping Al and N at 100oC. All the films were synthesized by radio-frequency magnetron sputtering on F-doped tin-oxide-coated glass. We found that co-doped ZnO:(Al,N) thin films exhibited significantly enhanced crystallinity as compared to ZnO doped solely with N, ZnO:N, at the same growth conditions. Furthermore, annealed ZnO:(Al,N) thin films exhibited enhanced N incorporation over ZnO:N films. As a result, ZnO:(Al,N) films exhibited improved photocurrents than ZnO:N films grown with pure N doping, suggesting that charge-compensated donor-acceptor co-doping could be a potential method for bandgap reduction of wide-bandgap oxide materials to improve their photoelectrochemical performance.