The impact of oxygen on Ga doped ZnO film

Yufeng Zhang; Wenxiong Zhao; Qiuchen Wu; Xinlu Lin; Ziyao Zhu; Ruchun Li; Yuhang Liu; Kai Huang; Xiangxin Liu

doi:10.1039/d2ra08263b

The impact of oxygen on Ga doped ZnO film

RSC Adv. 2023 Mar 23;13(14):9503-9510. doi: 10.1039/d2ra08263b. eCollection 2023 Mar 20.

Authors

Yufeng Zhang¹, Wenxiong Zhao¹, Qiuchen Wu^{1

2}, Xinlu Lin^{1

2}, Ziyao Zhu^{1

2}, Ruchun Li^{1

2}, Yuhang Liu^{1

2}, Kai Huang¹, Xiangxin Liu^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ The Key Laboratory of Solar Thermal and Photovoltaic System, Institute of Electrical Engineering, CAS Beijing 10019 China shinelu@mail.iee.ac.cn.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 10049 China.

Abstract

The Ga doped ZnO (GZO) film is one of the promising alternative films to replace ITO film, but its properties suffer from degradation when it is deposited under oxygen-rich conditions. This degradation has been investigated by depositing the films under different oxygen partial pressures. XRD results showed that all GZO films had wurtzite structure and the lattice parameter-c contracted when oxygen was introduced into the argon deposition atmosphere, but the parameter-c nearly remained constant when oxygen partial pressures were further increased. The contraction of parameter-c was caused by the increasing concentrations of V_Zn (Zn vacancy). It was the first time to observe that the impurity phase of Ga₂Zn₆O₉ appeared and disappeared in GZO films during the increase of oxygen partial pressures. Analogously, conductivity decayed and optical bandgap decreased abruptly as oxygen was introduced, which enhanced self-compensation of donors and acceptors. The energy band structures of GZO and ZnO films were determined by using UPS, and the results showed that oxygen had little effect on the electron affinity of the GZO film, but a significant difference in electron affinity between the ZnO and GZO films was observed. This result indicated that although the electron affinity of ZnO could be effectively tuned by doping with Ga, it remained quite stable for GZO under oxygen-rich conditions.