Abstract
In this study we investigated the influence of an organic polystyrene brush on the deposition of ZnO thin films under moderate conditions. On a non-modified SiOx surface, island growth is observed, whereas the polymer brush induces homogeneous film growth. A chemical modification of the polystyrene brushes during the mineralization process occurs, which enables stronger interaction between the then polar template and polar ZnO crystallites in solution. This may lead to oriented attachment of the crystallites so that the observed (002) texture arises. Characterization of the templates and the resulting ZnO films were performed with ζ-potential and contact angle measurements as well as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Infrared spectroscopy (IR) measurements were used to investigate the polystyrene brushes before and after modification.
Highlights
Due to its promising properties like photoemission in the UV range and its high piezoelectric coefficient, zinc oxide (ZnO; space group P63mc) is interesting for a wide range of applications
Maas et al [37] found that the functional vinyl endgroup is transformed into an alcohol which can react in a condensation reaction with silanol groups at the SiOx surface (Scheme 1b)
ZnO thin films were grown by chemical bath deposition under moderate conditions
Summary
Due to its promising properties like photoemission in the UV range and its high piezoelectric coefficient, zinc oxide (ZnO; space group P63mc) is interesting for a wide range of applications. We investigated the ZnO film formation on silicon wafers modified with vinyl-terminated polystyrene (PS) brushes. Since we measured a thickness of 1–2 nm for our PS films, we can calculate a nominal grafting density of 20–40% (0.164–0.329 molecules per nm2) for our brush system.
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