Influence of oxygen flow rate on the structural, optical and electrical properties of ZnO films grown by DC magnetron sputtering

Abstract

Zinc oxide thin films were deposited on glass substrates at different oxygen flow rates by DC reactive magnetron sputtering. The oxygen flow rate was found to be one of the crucial parameters which influence structural, optical and electrical properties of grown films. The structural and optical characterization of the deposited films was carried out using X-ray diffraction and UV–visible spectroscopy, respectively. Swanepoel envelope and Drude–Lorentz (DL) models were applied to extract the optoelectronic parameters such as refractive index, dispersion energy and plasma frequency. Structurally, grain size was found to decrease with increase in oxygen flow rate during deposition. Moreover, all the films exhibited preferred (002) orientation confirming c-axis orientation of the films perpendicular to the substrate. For a particular range of oxygen flow rates, columnar growth was achieved. Marginal increase in the optical band gap from 3.14 to 3.22 eV was observed as the oxygen flow rate increased from 3 to 10 sccm. Calculated plasma frequency from the DL model was found to be in the infrared region. It has decreased as oxygen flow rate increased with the value from 1.625 × 1014 rad/s (862 cm−1) to 1.072 × 1014 rad/s (568 cm−1).