Influence of substrate temperature on in situ-textured ZnO thin films grown by MOCVD

Abstract

The influence of substrate temperature on microstructure, electrical and optical properties of in situ-textured zinc oxide (ZnO) films fabricated by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOVCD) had been investigated. Results indicated that the substrate temperature played a very important role on preparation of ZnO thin film. With the raising of temperature, firstly ZnO crystals were perpendicular to the substrate, then they were grown inclining toward the substrate, finally ZnO crystals grown in layers but not regular. Consequently, ZnO film surface morphology changed from smooth to a pyramid structure and then disappeared little by little. Moreover, it was also found in this study that ZnO film was characterized with high crystallinity, low resistivity (2.17 × 10^-2) and high transmittance (>80%). These results suggested that ZnO thin film is suitable for front electrode of silicon thin film solar cell.

Keywords

metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOVCD) / in situ-textured / zinc oxide (ZnO) thin film / temperature

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Supporting Technology Project of Ministry of Education of China (No. 62501040202). The authors would like to thank all members of the thin film group at the Photonic and Information System Integration Institute for their support of this work and helpful discussion. The authors also thank Analytical and Testing center of Huazhong University of Science & Technology for their valuable suggestions and help for the samples characterizations.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg