The control of native defects in the ZnO material is strongly important for a wide range of technological applications. In this paper, native defects are tuned via the post-thermal treatment of ZnO films in a high vacuum atmosphere. The microstructure of the as-grown ZnO film shows columnar growth and strongly polar-oriented grains along the c-plane (002). Also, the obtained results indicate that the as-grown film contains a high amount of intrinsic defects and strong lattice distortions. After the thermal annealing, the ZnO films display significant structural changes, which are reflected in their electrical, vibrational, and optical properties. Our findings suggest that these changes were attributed to the selective cleanup effect of the native defects and the partial deoxidation process mainly on the exposed particle surface (at high temperatures) tuned up by the thermal annealing temperature. According to DFT calculations …
Autor(es):KJ Paz-Corrales, CA Vilca-Huayhua, FFH Aragón, L Villegas-Lelovsky, JAH Coaquira, SW Da Silva, GE Marques, MD Teodoro, DG Pacheco-Salazar
Año: 2022
Título de la revista: Physica Scripta
Volumen: 97
Número: 7
Url: https://doi.org/10.1088/1402-4896/ac758b