Improving the electrical, magnetic and antibacterial properties of sol–gel spin coated ZnO thin films through (Sn + Mn) co-doping

Abstract

Sn and Mn co-doped ZnO thin films were deposited onto glass substrates using sol–gel spin coating technique by keeping the Sn doping concentration in the starting solution at 6 at.% and by varying the Mn concentration from 0 to 10 at.% in steps of 2 at.%. The influence of Mn doping on the structural, electrical, optical, photoluminescence, magnetic and surface morphological properties were studied. The antibacterial activity was studied against Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. The structural studies revealed that all the films are grown along the (002) plane, irrespective of the doping concentration. The crystallite size decreases as the doping level is increased. The resistivity is minimum (5.49 × 10−3 Ω cm) at 8 at.% of Mn. All the films exhibit good transparency (85 %) in the visible region. The optical band gap of the films is found to be in the range of 3.27–3.41 eV.