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The physical properties of hydrogenated Co-doped ZnO thin films deposited at room temperature by RF-magnetron sputtering system

The roles of hydrogen induced defects in pure ZnO has been studied extensively. However, in a transition metal, such as Co, doped ZnO thin films the effect of hydrogen in electric conduction and magnetic coupling is still unclear and needs further study. Recently model predicts that hydrogen can be a shallow donor as well as an agent to induce ferromagnetism coupling between two adjacent Co ions which substitute the Zn sites at room temperature in a ZnO sample with a high Co doping ratio. However, the experimental supports is rare. In this study, Co-doped(5%) ZnO films are grown by a RF-magnetron sputtering system on glass substrate at room temperature. The growth condition is fixed for RF power in 200W, working press of 70 mtorr and various mixing ratio of H2/Ar+H2 gas. The crystal structure, electric and optical properties and the influence of vacuum annealing on the samples are studied. In this research, we found that the doping of hydrogen in Co-doped ZnO thin films truly increases the electric conductivity which is proportional to the H2/(Ar+H2) ratio. When the ratio of hydrogen is low, the (002) peak taken by a Glazing Angle X-ray Diffractometer dominates, while increasing hydrogen ratio other diffraction peaks appear, indicating an enhancement of crystal structure in all directions, and grain sizes and unit cell volume decrease. From the optical transmittance measurement, it is found that the color of films turned into metallic like and the optical band gap increases linearly with H2 ratio which can be attributed to the Burstein-Moss effect that corresponds to the increasing of carriers in the conduction band by doping of H2. The transmittance data provides the information of the ratio of crystalline and amorphous, which can also be correlated to the AFM results. When the H2 ratio is higher than 30%, more crystals and larger sizes of grains were formed in the films, such that carriers did not need to pass grain boundaries so frequently and experienced less scattering that was actually improve the electric conductivity. The electric conductivity can be even improved by post annealing in H2 environment. Moreover, the Magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) measurement shows that the Co2+ ions does truly substitute on Zn sited in Td symmetry during thin film deposition. The resistance measurement as a function of temperature found the hydrogenated Co-doped thin films are semiconductor conductive. More works are needed to determine the magnetization, identify second phases and Vo by SQUID and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0907111-123851
Date07 September 2011
CreatorsLin, Yu-Tsung
ContributorsShih-Jye Sun, Hsiung Chou, Hua Shu Hsu, Jau-Wern Chiou
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0907111-123851
Rightsuser_define, Copyright information available at source archive

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