RF magnetron sputtering has been employed to deposit n-type epitaxial zinc oxide thin films on p-type silicon substrates to form p-n diode structures. Commonly found on silicon, native SiOx layers, typically of a few nanometer thick, would hinder the epitaxial growth of ZnO. In this thesis work, a crystalline metal oxide layer was introduced as a buffer layer by redox reaction between a metal layer and the native SiO2. Aluminum was first sputtered for 20 seconds (4 nm), 40 seconds (8 nm), 60 seconds (12 nm) to produce three sets of samples. Each set was then annealed in situ at 450¢J for 20 minutes, 40 minutes, 60 minutes, respectively, to generate 9 different fabrication conditions meant to ignite a redox reaction between aluminum and the silicon oxide. All samples were treated for comparison by rapid thermal annealing to 900¢J, intended to improve the crystalline quality of the buffer layer and thus the epitaxial zinc oxide. Means to characterize the samples included (1) cross-sectional TEM (Transmission Electron Microscopy) observations of the interfaces and defects in various regions of the formed material or device structures; (2) x-ray crystallography via £s-2£c and rocking scans in regards to the perfection of the crystal structures and the relative film-substrate orientations; (3) photoluminescence spectroscopy, which showed oxygen deficiency in the ZnO epitaxial thin films as judged by the peaks of near-edge luminescence and mid-gap impurity states. The resulted material structure is a pin diode with a transparent n-ZnO layer sandwiching in the middle an aluminum oxide insulating layer with the p-Si substrate. The electrically insulating aluminum oxide layer serves to increase the minority carrier accumulation effect, extending carriers¡¦ effective life times and hence enhancing the light emission efficiency. Measuring the current-voltage characteristics of the pin device structures provides insights into the interface charges, while high-frequency capacitance-voltage curves helps give a glimpse of the interfaces between ZnO and Al2O3 or AlOx, as well as those between Al2O3 or AlOx and silicon, all concerning the electronic accumulations at each interface. Keywords: sputtering, ZnO, Al2O3 , pin diode.

In this work, Nitridated b-LiGaO2 substrates have been used to grow nonpolar a-plane ZnO epitaxial films by a homemade thermal chemical vapor deposition. We control the quality of the films by adjusting the deposition position, growth temperature and oxygen partial pressure. The properties of the ZnO films was investigated by x-ray diffraction(XRD), scanning electron microscopy(SEM), atomic force microscopy(AFM), photoluminescence spectra(PL), Raman spectra(Raman) and transmission electron microscopy(TEM). The results show that the crystal quality, surface morphology and optical properties of a-plane ZnO films are strongly related to the deposition position and growth temperature. It is also found that the surface roughness of the ZnO films gets more smoothly with increasing the oxygen partial pressure. Up to now, ZnO films grown at 700¢J diplay the best crystal quality, the full width at half maximum values of (11-20)ZnO omega scan rocking curve is 0.5¢X. In comparison with above growth condition, it demonstrate better optical properties by shortening deposition position and increasing growth temperature to 750¢J. Room temperature PL spectra exhibit a strong near band edge emission and a negligible green band. Furthermore, low temperature PL spectra is dominated by neutral donor-bound excitons and free electron-to-bound emission. From the TEM selected area diffraction patterns and the XRD phi angle scan, the epitaxy relationship between ZnO and LGO is determined as [001]LGO//[0001]ZnO and [100]LGO//[10-10]ZnO. XRD omega-two theta scan and Raman spectra analysis are carried out to characterize the status of the strain in ZnO film is compressive, the reason is illustrate in detail.

In this thesis, n-type ZnO thin films are grown on buffered p-type Si substrates by RF sputtering. The buffer is a pure nanometer-thick Al layer deposited onto a Si substrate that has a native SiOx over-layer. The Al- layer is meant to react with the native oxide and reduce it back to the pure Si formation when the Al-layer is itself oxidized into AlOx. The pin diodes with ZnO grown on AlOx are expected to outperform those with ZnO on SiOx on the aspects of electrical quality and crystallographic orientations. The transmission electron microscopy was employed to study the epitaxial relationship between the ZnO layers and the Si substrates, the crystal structure, and defects at the ZnO-Al or Al-SiOx interfaces. X-ray diffraction studies through £s-2£c, rocking curve, GIXRD and pole-figure scans were also conducted to see the differences between as-deposited and post-annealing treated samples concerning with the ZnO crystallographic orientations and general qualities. Through comparisons of the leakage current and the tunneling behaviors , the electrical measurements can be used to analyze the pin devices.

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In this thesis, we use reactive RF magnetron sputtering to deposit zinc oxide (ZnO) buffer layer and main layer on SiO2/Si substrate at room temperature. After various annealing treatments, the ZnO nanowires can be obtained. The effects of buffer layer on the crystallization of ZnO main layer and the zinc-to-oxygen ratio in the main layer on the growth of the ZnO nanowires are analyzed by PL, SEM, XRD and EDS. Finally, the growth mechanism of the ZnO nanowires is investigated by various annealing temperatures. According to the experimental results, surplus zinc in the main layer is necessary for the ZnO nanowires growth. When the annealing temperature is higher than the melting point of zinc, it will melt and be extruded onto thin film surface as a result of the thermal stress. As soon as the melting zinc on the film surface reacts with the oxygen in the air, ZnO nanowires can be obtained. The optimum ZnO nanowires which possess better morphology and high density are revealed by conventional thermal annealing at 600¢J for 90 minutes.

In recent years, transparent and conductive layers of some metallic oxide, such as cadmium oxide, indium oxide, tin oxide and zinc oxide, can be used for semiconducting transparent coatings. Transparent electronics are nowadays a crucial technology for the next generation of optoelectronic devices. Zinc oxide (ZnO) is a II-VI compound semiconductor with a wide direct bandgap of 3.37 eV. Therefore, ZnO based transparent thin film transistors (TFTs) have been studied extensively. For the wide variety of applications, numerous ZnO films preparation methods have been attempted. In this thesis, the devices of ZnZrO active channel layers were fabricated by the sol-gel spin-coating method. These ZnZrO TFTs were fabricated by bottom-gate bottom-contact-type TFTs. The Experimental results have shown that the electrical properties of the ZnZrO TFTs are strongly dependent on visible light and ambient oxygen. In addition, in this study, the results concerning the influence of temperature on the electrical properties of ZnZrO TFTs also have been discussed. Finally, except for the application of switch devices, the ZnZrO TFTs by sol-gel spin-coating process exhibits a potential application for gas sensors.

ZnO thin film is a suitable material for the phosphor layer of green emission of the electroluminescence (EL) device. Therefore, the luminescence mechanism of green emission of ZnO thin film is a key issue to be investigated. In this thesis, ZnO thin films are deposited on SiO2/Si substrates using sol-gel method and sputtering technology, and then post-annealed by a rapid thermal annealing (RTA) process under various annealing temperatures (200¢J~900¢J) and atmospheres (vacuum, ambient atmosphere and oxygen). The physical and photoluminescence (PL) characteristics were first discussed. Secondly, the relationship between the chemical composition and the PL properties were also investigated to figure out the dominant luminescent center of ZnO thin film. Finally, ZnO thin film was applied as the phosphor layer of AC thin film EL device and the characteristics were discussed. According to the experimental results of ZnO thin film prepared using sol-gel method and RTA process, the XRD patterns show a preferred (002) orientation after annealing. The grain size became larger with the increasing annealing temperature. From PL measurement, two ultraviolet (UV) luminescence bands were obtained, and the intensity became stronger when the annealing temperature was increased. The strongest UV light emission appeared at annealing temperature of 900¢J in oxygen. The X-ray photoelectron spectrum (XPS) demonstrated that a more stoichiometric ZnO thin film was obtained upon annealing in oxygen and more excitons were generated from the radiative recombination carriers consistently, and resulted in the strong UV emission. However, no green emission was obtained from ZnO thin film prepared by sol-gel method. The XRD patterns also exit an excellent preferred (002) orientation of ZnO thin film deposited using sputtering and RTA process. The grain size of ZnO thin film annealed at 200¢J~500¢J increased with the increasing annealing temperature, and then exhibited a melting state with the temperature of 600¢J~700¢J. A large and complete grain was observed at the temperature of 900¢J. The PL spectrum illustrated that a stronger UV emission intensity appeared at annealing temperature of 500¢J. On the other hand, the green light emission could be obtained as ZnO films were annealed above 500¢J and reached a maximum intensity at 900¢J. Based on the XPS analysis, the O1s peak of ZnO film revealed that the concentration of oxygen vacancy increased with the annealing temperature from 600¢J to 900¢J under an ambient atmosphere. The PL results demonstrated that the intensity of green light emission at 523nm also increased with temperature. Under various annealing atmospheres, the analyses of PL indicated that only one emission peak (523nm) was obtained, indicating that only one class of defect was responsible for the green luminescence. The green light emission was strongest and the concentration of oxygen vacancies was highest when the ZnO film was annealed in ambient atmosphere at 900¢J. According to the experimental results manifested above, room temperature was used to deposit films to increase the ratio of Zn atoms inside the thin film when using sputtering technique to deposit ZnO thin film. With the modulation of the annealing parameters, stronger green light emission could be obtained. The luminescence mechanism of the emission of green light from a ZnO thin film is associated primarily with oxygen vacancies. In addition, only UV light emission of ZnO thin film prepared using sol-gel method was obtained because of the better stoichiometry.

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Transparent Conductive Oxide thin films (TCO) with low resistivity and high light transmission act as transparent electrode for many kinds of display panel. At present, Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) is common transparent electrode material. Because Indium is classified rare element, and it has toxicity. Moreover ITO is unstable in high temperature. Recent years many researches are searching adaptive materials to replace ITO. Al doped ZnO (AZO) has same characteristics of low resistivity and high light transmission, it is one of the adaptive materials. In this study, we choice AZO and ITO target. Sputtering is a common method to deposition TCO. We sputtered the AZO film and ITO film on glass substrate and measured the characteristics respectively. In addition, because Liquid Phase Deposition (LPD) has advantages of simple process, low cost and large amount of wafers can be used. Therefore, in this study we growth ZnO thin film on glass substrate simultaneously, and doped Aluminum to increase conductivity.

A low-temperature method, supercritical CO2 fluid (SCCF) technology, was applied for oxidation of metal Zn film on glass substrate at 60¢XC. In this study, Zn film was deposited by DC sputtering at room temperature and post-treated by SCCF, which is mixed with 0.15 vol % H2O. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images and transmission electron microscopic (TEM) indicate that high density ZnO Nanotubes were formed on the glass substrate. SCCF technology has shown successful oxidation the Zinc at low temperature for the first time.