Rapid Plasma-Assisted, Ambient-Pressure Deposition of Conformal Nanocrystalline Zinc Oxide Thin Films for Solar Cell Applications

摘要

This paper reports a plasma-assisted, rapid, ambient-pressure, low-temperature one-step process for depositing conformal, non-porous nanocrystalline ZnO thin film on various substrates ranging from Si (100), fused quartz, glass, muscovite, c- and a-plane sapphire (Al_2O_3), to the common polymer polyimide (Kapton?). The as-synthesized polycrystalline films range in thickness from 20nm to 200nm, deposited at a growth rate ranging from 2 nm/min to 50 nm/min. The lowest deposition temperature achieved with this method is 180°C and progress is being made in further lowering this temperature. The as-deposited films are highly oriented in the c-axis, with (002) being the dominant planes.