The influence of annealing temperature on ZnO thin films by oxidating Zinc films deposited with magnetron sputtering

Zn films were prepared on Si (111) substrates by radio frequency magnetron sputtering system, which were subsequently annealed at different temperature in O-2 ambient. Their microstructure, morphology, composition and optical properties, particularly as a function of annealing temperature, were studied by XRD, SEM, FTIR, XPS and PL characterizations. All the results show that the crystal quality of ZnO film can be improved by increasing annealing temperature, and the optimum annealing temperature is 800 degrees C in our experiment. The XRD and SEM results show that the ZnO films have a hexagonal structure with cell constants of a = 0.3249 nm and c = 0.5206 nm under the optimum experimental conditions. The FTIR and XPS results further confirm hexagonal structure of ZnO. The PL result shows that best UV and green light emission are found in the samples annealed at 800 degrees C.