Analysis and applications of ZnO semiconductor films deposited by laser and sputtering techniques

In this paper, ZnO thin films deposited by two methods have been studied. Specifically, the films were grown using i) Laser Assisted Molecular Beam Deposition (LAMBD) and ii) RF sputtering. Subsequent to film deposition, a subset of samples deposited using LAMBD were laser annealed. An additional set of samples (from LAMBD and RF sputtering) were annealed with N₂ or forming gas at 600°C for 30mins. After deposition, optical and electrical properties of ZnO thin films have been studied. The application of ZnO to optical devices, including Metal-Semiconductor-Metal Photodetectors (MSM-PD) and solar cells, has been made. Several deposition experiments recently demonstrated that the thin films of RF-ZnO and LAMBD-ZnO have near ZnO parameters including refractive index close to 2, 1:1 stoichiometry ZnO, and 3.3 eV ZnO bandgap. Mixtures of single crystal and polycrystal grains were observed by Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) from LAMBD ZnO thin films. MSM current-voltage data show symmetrical photo current behavior. High ratio of photocurrent to dark current, good responsivity and fast pulse response of LAMBD-ZnO MSM were observed. ZnO/Si heterojunction solar cell result has been demonstrated and improvement in the ultraviolet light spectrum of spectral response has been shown in this paper.