A Study On The Reactive Sputtering Preparation Of ZnO Films With K575DX Sputtering Coater

Zinc-oxide (ZnO) is a novelⅡ-Ⅳwide band compound semiconductors with a direct band gap of 3.37eV at room temperature and a large exciton energy of 60meV. It’s a unique material that exhibits excellent photoelectric, piezoelectric, thermoelectric and ferromagnetic multiple properties, which can be used to prepare photoelectric devices such as short-wavelength light emitting diode (LEDs), ultraviolet laser diode and surface acoustic wave devices and so on, and has been widely studied in recent years.Direct Current Reactive Magnetic Sputtering (DCRMS) is a good technique of preparing films which combines the advantages of magnetron sputtering and reactive sputtering. It employs direct current and pure metal sputtering target, which lowers the requirement for the instruments and consume less energy, and is usually used to fabricate ZnO thin film. K575XD Turbo Sputter Coater produced by Emitech corporation is a high-quality coating device, it was equipped with a magnetron and two sputtering heads, and therefore can realize fast preparation of high-quality and fine grain multicomponent films; After proper modification by adding an inlet reactive gas path and a substrate heating device, K575XD sputter coater can be used to prepare ZnO films with a DCRMS technique.Concerning on the photoelectric application of ZnO thin films, we studied the fabrication of high-quality ZnO films on the modified K575XD sputter coater by DCRMS technique. In experiments, we prepared ZnO films under different parameters separately, and had the fabricated films tested by SEM, XRD and Raman Spectroscopy to find out the influence of substrate kind, substrate temperature, sputtering current and annealing temperature on the ZnO film quality; Basing on the results of technological parameters’effects on ZnO thin films, we got an optimized combination of technological parameters to fabricate high-quality ZnO films. The XRD and PL spectrum test indicates that the prepared films under the optimized parameters have a fine crystal structure and a good optical property.