Effect of post thermal annealing on the structural and optical properties of ZnO thin films prepared from polymer precursor

Abstract

ZnO thin films were synthesized in a new method which uses Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) as polymer precursor. The films are annealed at different temperatures to study the effect of post thermal annealing on the structural and optical properties of grown films. It was found that all the films possess tensile strain which increases as annealing temperature increases. The structural parameters like grain size, lattice constants, optical band gap and Urbach energy depend on the annealing temperature.