Title: Morphological evolution of zinc oxide thin films with variation in sputtering power and substrate temperature

Authors: Surya Prakash Ghosh; Kailash Chandra Das; Nilakantha Tripathy; Gouranga Bose; Do Hoon Kim; Tae Il Lee; Jae-Min Myoung; Jyoti Prakash Kar

Addresses: Department of Physics and Astronomy, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela 769008, India ' Department of Physics and Astronomy, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela 769008, India ' Department of Physics and Astronomy, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela 769008, India ' FST, IFHE University, Hyderabad 501203, India ' Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul 120749, South Korea ' Department of Bio-Nanotechnology, Gachon University, Gyeonggi-do 461701, South Korea ' Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul 461701, South Korea ' Department of Physics and Astronomy, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela 769008, India

Abstract: Zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films were deposited on silicon substrates by reactive RF magnetron sputtering technique in order to investigate the evolution of the morphological and the optical properties as a function of different RF power and substrate temperature. Analysis of RF power and the substrate temperature have played a significant role in the morphological and the optical properties of the sputtered ZnO thin films. X-ray diffraction pattern of ZnO thin film has shown the appearance of c-axis-oriented (002) peak for all samples with variation in the degrees of crystallinity. The surface roughness as well as the average grain size of the ZnO films found to be decreased with RF power, where as the films grown at higher temperature has shown the evolution of larger grains. ZnO films, deposited at 150 W RF power and substrate of 200°C, have shown better optical properties.

Keywords: zinc oxide; magnetron sputtering; RF power; substrate temperature; microstructure; morphological evolution; ZnO thin films; silicon substrates; optical properties; surface roughness; grain size; surface quality.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMMP.2016.080696

International Journal of Microstructure and Materials Properties, 2016 Vol.11 No.5, pp.325 - 338

Received: 26 Jan 2015
Accepted: 28 Jan 2016
Published online: 04 Dec 2016 *

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