Study On The Sintering And Properties Of Ga_xZn_1-xO Ceramics

As a result of electronic thin film materials with high conductivity, high photoelectric conversion efficiency and high optical transmittance of visible light, making it has great application prospect in the thin film solar cells, flat panel display and auto glass and so on. At present, the most widely used transparent conductive film material is tin doped indium oxide(ITO), for the resources of metal indium resources is scarce, it’s price is high and it has toxicity, so the development of alternative ITO transparent conductive film material becomes one of research hot spots. The optical transmittance of Ga doped ZnO(GZO) thin film in the visible region is higher than 90%, the conductivity of it is higher than 1×104 Ω-1·cm-1 and it has great photoelectric conversion efficiency. In addition, GZO thin film is not only abundant in source, low in cost, but also have good chemical stability and non-toxic, so it is a ideal material used for insteading indium oxide doped tin oxide thin film.Before the preparation of GZO thin film, we need to obtain excellent and compact ceramic target. GZO target’s preparation technology, like ITO ceramic, is difficult and core technology of it is mastered by United States, European and other developed countries. In China, gallium doped ZnO ceramics are still in the laboratory research level and GZO target supply for industrial production is still dependent on imports, so determine the best sintering process of GZO ceramic to serve scientific research and industrial production is imminent. In addition, determining the best concentration of gallium doped zinc oxide ceramics has great reference value to study the performance of GZO thin film, while paper about it have been reported rarely. In recent years, many published articles are focused on the thin film materials, while researchs on the gallium doped zinc oxide ceramics are relatively few.We used solid-state reaction technique investigated the preparation process of GaxZn1-xO ceramics. In this paper, the influence of the gallium impurity on morphologies, microstructure and electrical properties as well as doping mechanism were analyzed and discussed. In addition, the influence of sintering temperature on crystal structure and electrical properties of Ti0.005Zn0.995 O ceramics were also discussed.The measured results have shown that the optimum sintering conditions of GZO ceramics are a sintering temperature of 1325℃ and a sintering time of 4 hours and the best doping concentrations is 0.5 at%. Among all the impurity doped samples in this study, the 0.5 at% Ga-doped ceramics exhibited the highest electrical performance. The resistivity of gallium doped ZnO samples are decreased with the increase of temperature, which indicates that GZO specimens exhibited semiconductor behavior. Different anneal atmosphere(N2, O2, Ar, He, Vacuum) have little effects in improve ceramics’ electrical performance. Gallium doping elements can regulate the luminescence performance of zinc oxide. This research will impel the development and application of GZO conductive ceramic.