Structural and optical characteristics of RF sputtered ZnO thinfilm on Si substrate for device applications

In this paper, we have investigated the structural and optical characteristics of ZnO thin film grown through Radio frequency magnetron (RF) sputtering technique on n-Silicon substrate. The surface morphological characteristics of the sample have been investigated by using Scanning electron microscope (SEM) and Atomic force microscope (AFM), which confirms the growth of uniform and smooth ZnO film on the substrate. Crystallographic studies were conducted using X-Ray diffraction technique (XRD) which revealed the preferentially Caxis oriented growth of film with hexagonal Wurtzite structure. We have also calculated micro structural parameters such as particle size, lattice constants, lattice stress and strain, dislocation density etc. Photoluminescence (PL) spectra shows strong near-band edge emission, indicating excellent crystallinity of deposited film with optical band gap as 3.25 eV. UV visible spectra of the film displayed excellent transmittance in the visible region. All the results confirm that the fabricated Zinc Oxide thin film can be used for all typical device applications.