Zinc oxide thin films by spray pyrolysis method

ZnO thin films were deposited by spraying of zinc acetate solution onto hea ted glass substrates at 670 K. Highly textured in the (002) direction undop ed ZnO films, exhibiting exciton emission bands in photoluminescence spectr a at 8 K, were grown. The initial stages of the thin film growth and effect of doping with In, Ce and Eu were studied. A spraying time of 30 s leads t o continuous crystalline films with well-shaped grains with narrow granulom etric distribution and mean grain size close to 35 nm. Depositing times lon ger than 2 min lead to the solid phase sintering process. Wide granulometri c distribution of the grains in the range of 50-400 nm was found for undope d films. It is shown that the size and orientation of crystallites in the f ilm, the optical and electrical properties of the films are determined by t he dopant concentration. As a result dense ZnO films with high optical tran smittance were produced.