Growth and optical properties of ZnO nanorod arrays on Al-doped ZnO transparent conductive film

Suanzhi Lin,Hailong Hu,Fachun Lai,Weifeng Zheng,Yan Qu

doi:10.1186/1556-276x-8-158

Abstract

ZnO nanorod arrays (NRAs) on transparent conductive oxide (TCO) films have been grown by a solution-free, catalyst-free, vapor-phase synthesis method at 600°C. TCO films, Al-doped ZnO films, were deposited on quartz substrates by magnetron sputtering. In order to study the effect of the growth duration on the morphological and optical properties of NRAs, the growth duration was changed from 3 to 12 min. The results show that the electrical performance of the TCO films does not degrade after the growth of NRAs and the nanorods are highly crystalline. As the growth duration increases from 3 to 8 min, the diffuse transmittance of the samples decreases, while the total transmittance and UV emission enhance. Two possible nanorod self-attraction models were proposed to interpret the phenomena in the sample with 9-min growth duration. The sample with 8-min growth duration has the highest total transmittance of 87.0%, proper density about 75 μm−2, diameter about 26 nm, and length about 500 nm, indicating that it can be used in hybrid solar cells.

Highlights

ZnO, one of the most important metal oxides, has a wide bandgap of 3.37 eV and a high exciton binding energy of 60 meV at room temperature
The light is coupled in devices through transparent conductive oxide (TCO) substrate, so tailored well-aligned ZnO nanorod arrays (NRAs) grown on TCO substrate are of particular interest because they can improve the device performance [14]
We focus on the growth and optical properties of ZnO NRAs, which were grown by a solution-free, catalyst-free, vapor-phase synthesis method at a temperature of 600°C

Summary

Introduction

ZnO, one of the most important metal oxides, has a wide bandgap of 3.37 eV and a high exciton binding energy of 60 meV at room temperature. We focus on the growth and optical properties of ZnO NRAs, which were grown by a solution-free, catalyst-free, vapor-phase synthesis method at a temperature of 600°C. This method can grow ZnO NRAs on Aldoped ZnO (AZO) films, and the performance of AZO does not degrade after the growth of NRAs. AZO has the advantage of being indium free and can be produced on a large scale. The effect of growth duration on the morphology and optical properties of NRAs has been investigated

Methods

Results

Conclusion