Deposition of polycrystalline ZnO films by two-step method and characterization of thermal annealing effects

Abstract

Polycrystalline ZnO thin films were deposited on SiO2/Si(100) substrate using RF magnetron sputtering. The film deposition performed in this work was composed of following two procedures; the 1st-deposition for 30 min without oxygen at 100 W and the 2nd-deposition with oxygen in the range O2/(Ar+O2) = 10∼50 %. Deposited ZnO films revealed a strongly c-axis preferred-orientation (the corresponding texture coefficient ∼ 100 %) as well as a high resistivity (> 107 Ωcm). It was also observed that the crystallite size of ZnO was noticeably increased by thermal-annealing.