Influence of high nitrogen doping on optical properties of ZnO thin films

Abstract

ZnO semiconductor is one of the photocatalyst materials that has become a concern in the world of research. This is due to its ability to degrade pollutants effectively, economically and environmentally friendly. Many studies have been developed to enhance the photocatalytic activity of ZnO, one of them by the addition of doping. Increasing the concentration of non-metallic doping on ZnO will affect its energy level so that it can improve the physical properties and optical properties. Nitrogen has been considered as a very good dopant because it has an ionic radius comparable to oxygen and also has small ionization energy. High nitrogen-doped ZnO thin films have been deposited by sol-gel spray coating methods on glass substrate. Using spectrophotometer UV-Vis Materials were characterized to obtain the absorbance spectrum, in order to analyze its optical absorption region. The result shows that all materials have high absorption in the UV region. In general, the graph shows that the absorption spectra in the UV region increase with increasing percentage of dopant and have maximum absorption spectra on the sample with 40% dopant. It indicates that high N-doping enhanced the light absorption capacity of ZnO.