Growth and properties of ZnO film grown on AlN buffer layer by PLD

Abstract

In this work, c-plane AlN/c-sapphire templates have been used to grow ZnO films by pulsed laser deposition. The thickness of AlN buffer layer was 150nm and the ZnO thin films was investigated using photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy, Raman measurements, high-resolution x-ray diffraction (HRXRD), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The results showed that c-plane ZnO growth on c-plane sapphire by PLD at slight rough surface morphology of AlN buffer layer can result in a significant variation of ZnO crystallinity. The full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the (0002)ω-rocking curve of the c-plane ZnO films grown on the 150nm-thickness AlN/c-sapphire template was 0.09°. To our knowledge, the FWHM is the minimum value at present for ZnO films grown on AlN/c-sapphire template. Furthermore, the comparative investigation results show that the ZnO films grown on 150nm-thickness AlN/c-sapphire templates is more likely to form better than grown directly on c-sapphire substrate by PLD.