Epitaxial growth of thin films and nanodots of ZnO on Si(111) by pulsed laser deposition

Abstract

Epitaxial (0001) ZnO thin films were grown on (111) Si substrates buffered with intermediate epitaxial (111) yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) layers by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy characterizations revealed that the YSZ buffer layers enabled the epitaxial growth of structurally high quality ZnO films and an atomically sharp ZnO/YSZ interface, proving to be an effective epitaxial template. The epitaxial orientation relationships were revealed as follows: (0001) ZnO||(111) YSZ||(111) Si and [1¯21¯0] ZnO||[1¯10] YSZ||[1¯10] Si. Room temperature photoluminescence spectrum of the ZnO films showed the excitonic ultraviolet emission with few green emissions relevant to oxygen vacancies in the film. Furthermore, we fabricated ZnO nanostructures on the same (111) YSZ||(111) Si substrates by simply manipulating PLD conditions for the epitaxial film growth. The size control of the ZnO nanodots was realized by varying the number of laser pulses. A blueshift behavior induced by quantum confinement was observed, as the nanodot size decreases.