DC Magnetron Sputtering Fabrication Of Sb-doped ZnO Thin Films And Their Optical Properties

Zinc oxide (ZnO) is a new compound semiconductor material with direct wide band gap of about 3.37eV at room temperature. Its exciton binding energy is 60 meV. Theoretically it is more easily to achieve stimulated emission efficiently. The ZnO has many advantages in the structural, electrical and optical, etc. the production methods of ZnO thin films keep optimizing, So there are great potential applications in light-emitting diodes, transparent conductive film, solar cell windows, surface acoustic wave devices, gas sensors and other fields.In this paper, We adopt DC magnetron sputtering process and deposited ZnO and doped with different concentrations of antimony ZnO:Sb thin films respectively. In the experiments, the thin films were annealed in high-purity nitrogen at 450℃,550℃for one hour. We analyze prepared ZnO and Sb-doped ZnO thin films by step meter, double-beam UV-visible spectrophotometer, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and fluorescence spectrophotometer and study the thickness of thin films, structure and optical properties in-depth. XRD results showed that ZnO grain size gradually increased, and gradually change from the amorphous to the crystalline state with increasing annealing temperature, The ZnO thin films obtained better stability process conditions which are preferred growth in the(002)direction.This paper analyzes the amount of Sb doping, oxygen concentration and annealing temperature have an influence on transmittance microstructure and optical band gap of ZnO and ZnO:Sb thin film. The results showed that the increase of doping with Sb makes the film spacing become larger and the grain size decrease. It indicates that Sb doping makes the grain refine and the optical band gap decrease. As the oxygen concentrating, the film deposition rate decreases, the interplanar spacing increases, the optical band gap increases; annealing makes the optical band gap decreaseWe also studied the photoluminescence of ZnO and ZnO:Sb thin films in this paper, and analyzed the oxygen concentration and annealing temperature have an influence on the luminescence of thin films film samples. All film samples show a wavelength of 430nm and 460 at the blue emission peak, ZnO thin films with 3% amount of Sb doped have emerged of the green emission peak at 520nm. Finally ,wediscussed preliminarily the visible light emission mechanism that the 430nm blue lighfrom the electron transitions formates shallow donor level to valence band from the zincinterstitial (Zni)...