Sol-gel derived highly transparent and conducting yttrium doped ZnO films

This paper reports the structural, electrical and optical properties of Yttrium doped zinc oxide (YZO) thin films deposited on Corning (7059) glass substrates by spin coating technique. A precursor solution of ZnO, 0.2 M in concentration was prepared from zinc acetate dissolved in anhydrous ethanol with diethanolamine as a sol gel stabilizer. Yttrium nitrate hexahydrate (Y2NO3 center dot 6H(2)O) was used as the dopant (3 wt%) in the present study. The films of different thickness in the range (200-500 nm) were prepared. The films were annealed in air at 450 degrees C for 1 h. It was observed that the c-axis orientation improves and the grain size increases as is indicated by an increase in intensity of the (002) peak and the decrease in the FWHM with the increase of film thickness. The resistivity decreased sharply from 2.8 x 10(-2) to 5.8 x 10(-3) Omega-cm as the thickness increased from 200 to 500 nm. However, the average transmittance decreased from 87% to 82.6% as the film thickness increased to 500 nm. The lowest sheet resistance of similar to 120 Omega/square was obtained for the 500 nm thick film. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.