Title: Influence of deposition parameters on structural, morphological and optical properties of ZnO films using robust design approach

Authors: B.W. Shivaraj; H.N. Narasimha Murthy; M. Krishna; B.M. Nagabhushana; Sushanth D. Shandilya; B.S. Satyanarayana

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, R.V. College of Engineering, Bangalore-560 059, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, R.V. College of Engineering, Bangalore-560 059, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, R.V. College of Engineering, Bangalore-560 059, India ' Department of Chemistry, M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bangalore-560 054, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, R.V. College of Engineering, Bangalore-560 059, India ' R.V. College of Engineering, Bangalore-560 059, India

Abstract: This paper investigates the influence of deposition parameters on the crystallite size, roughness and transmittance of zinc oxide thin films by sol-gel technique using L₉ orthogonal array. The thin films were deposited on the quartz substrate and the coating parameters were investigated for the influence of sucrose fuel, spinning speed, spinning duration and calcination temperature. Crystallite size was influenced by sucrose by 54.34%. Calcination temperature influenced roughness and transmittance by 57.49% and 68.56% respectively. The process yielded thin films with surface roughness of 131.45 nm, crystallite size of 12.78 and transmittance of 82.58% for the treatment sucrose 0.6 gram, spinning speed of 3,000 rpm, spinning duration of 30 seconds and calcination temperature of 900°C.

Keywords: spin coating; surface roughness; crystallite size; transmittance; ZnO thin films; zinc oxide; deposition parameters; structural properties; morphological properties; optical properties; robust design; sol-gel; surface quality; quartz substrate; coating parameters; sucrose fuel; spinning speed; spinning duration; calcination temperature; orthogonal arrays.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMATEI.2015.072205

International Journal of Materials Engineering Innovation, 2015 Vol.6 No.2/3, pp.154 - 169

Received: 29 Sep 2014
Accepted: 23 Dec 2014
Published online: 04 Oct 2015 *

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