K.S. Lee

Characteristics of hydrogen co-doped ZnO : Al thin films

ZnO films co-doped with H and Al (HAZO) were prepared by sputtering ZnO targets containing 1 wt% Al2O3 on Corning glass at a substrate temperature of 150 °C with Ar and H2/Ar gas mixtures. The effects of hydrogen addition to Al-doped ZnO (AZO) films with low Al content on the electrical, the optical and the structural properties of the as-grown films as well as the vacuum- and air-annealed films were examined. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy analysis showed that the hydrogen concentration increased with increasing H2 in sputter gas. For the as-deposited films, the free carrier number increased with increasing H2. The Hall mobility increased at low hydrogen content, reaching a maximum before decreasing with a further increase of H2 content in sputter gas. Annealing at 300 °C resulted in the removal of hydrogen, causing a decrease in the carrier concentration. It was shown that hydrogen might exist as single isolated interstitial hydrogen bound with oxygen, thereby acting like an anionic dopant. Also, it was shown that the addition of hydrogen to ZnO films doped with low metallic dopant concentration could yield transparent conducting films with very low absorption loss as well as with proper electrical properties, which is suitable for thin film solar cell applications.

Density-of-state effective mass and non-parabolicity parameter of impurity doped ZnO thin films

The density-of-state effective masses of impurity doped polycrystalline ZnO thin films were measured by the method of four coefficients technique. By applying the first-order non-parabolicity approximation, the polaron effective mass and the bare band mass at the conduction band minimum, together with the corresponding non-parabolicity parameters, were analysed successfully. The determined perpendicular polaron mass of 0.29 me and the bare band mass of 0.247 me at the conduction band minimum corresponded very well to the previous results obtained for ZnO single crystals. The non-parabolicity parameter of 0.457 eV−1 derived for the polaron effective mass was larger than 0.33 eV−1 which was obtained for the bare band mass due to the increasing function of the Frohlich coupling constant with respect to the bare band mass in polycrystalline ZnO films.

Hydrogen in polycrystalline ZnO thin films

The influence and the states of hydrogen in polycrystalline ZnO thin films were investigated by preparing films with different amounts of oxygen vacancies at various hydrogen potentials. The most notable effect of hydrogen addition was passivation of grain boundaries. The majority of hydrogen incorporation in polycrystalline ZnO films was attributed to hydrogen interstitials, and a substantially smaller number of multicentre bonds at oxygen vacancies were formed even at high hydrogen potentials. The major source of free carriers in polycrystalline ZnO films deposited without intentional hydrogen addition was oxygen vacancies with 2+ charge state with large atomic relaxation.

Optical Properties of Au Nanoparticle Dispersed (Ba,Sr)TiO3 Thin Films

Abstract Au nanoparticles dispersed (Ba,Sr)TiO3 thin films were fabricated using alternating sputtering method. With the nominal thickness of Au layer of 1 nm, the spherical Au particles of 3.83 nm size were obtained showing the spatial distribution referred to a Maxell-Garnett type effective medium geometry. The film shows the characteristic surface plasmon resonance absorption band at 571 nm. Based on the effective medium theory, the linear optical functions of the films were characterized. The third-order optical nonlinearity was analyzed by a single beam Z-scan technique with a picosecond pulse laser. The real and imaginary parts of third-order susceptibility can be resolved at several wavelengths around the SPR by virtue of wavelength tunable optical parametric generator. The maximum absolute value of third-order susceptibility as large as 3.847 × 10− 8 esu were obtained at the SPR frequency.