Improvement of the characteristics of ZnO thin films using ZnO buffer layer

ZnO 저온 성장 버퍼에 의한 ZnO 박막의 특성 향상

The effect of low-temperature ZnO buffer layer has been investigated for the optical properties of ZnO thin films. ZnO buffers and thin films have been deposited using the pulsed laser deposition technique. ZnO buffer layers were grown at $200^{\circ}C$ with various thickness of 0 to 60 nm, followed by raising the substrate temperature to $400^{\circ}C$ to grow $2{\mu}m$ ZnO thin films. The buffer layers could relax stresses induced by the lattice mismatch and different thermal expansion coefficients between ZnO thin films and sapphire substrate. In order to identify the optical properties of ZnO thin films, PL measurement was used. From the results of PL measurement, all the fabricated ZnO thin films with buffer layers have shown intensive UV emission with a narrow linewidth. ZnO thin films with buffer layer of 20 nm have shown the strongest UV emission. It was found that the use of ZnO buffer layer plays an important role to improve the intensive UV emission of the ZnO thin films.