Nanostructured doped zinc oxide thin solid films: the effect of different doping elements on the electrical and morphological properties

摘要

Zinc oxide (ZnO) is a multifunctional semiconductor with a wide direct band gap (3.3 eV); due to its tunable optoelectronic characteristics it is one of the transparent conductive oxides (TCO) materials most commonly used as front and back transparent conductors in photovoltaic cells (PVC) architecture. The electrical and optical properties of TCO materials strongly depend on the crystalline defects (oxygen vacancies/interstitial zinc) and on the nature, as well on the amount of foreign atoms trapped in the host lattice. In this study a summary of some results of ZnO thin solid films deposited by the pneumatic spray pyrolysis technique, and doped with several different atoms, namely, Fluorine (F), Gallium (Ga) and Indium (In), are given. The materials synthesis was carried out for each doped ZnO film with a systematic variation in: substrate temperature, and doping concentration of the starting solutions. The influence of the variations of these deposition parameters on the electrical and structural properties of the ZnO films synthesized is presented and discussed.