Optical and Electrical Characteristic of Layer-by-layer Sol-gel Spin Coated Nanoparticles ZnO Thin Films

Transparent nanoparticles ZnO thin films have been deposited on glass substrates using sol-gel spin coating technique. 0.35M sol were prepared by dissolving zinc acetate dehydrate in 2-methoxyethanol with monoethanolamine as the stabilizer. In this paper, a novel method called layer-by-layer is introduced, where the thin film is not only dried after each layer is spin-coated, but also directly annealed at 500 degrees C to improve the electrical and optical properties of the films. Samples without annealing were also prepared as the reference sample. ZnO thin films were characterized using current-voltage measurement, UV-Vis spectroscopy and photoluminescence spectroscopy. The results revealed that layer-by-layer ZnO thin films have lower resistivity compared to the reference samples with a maximum value of 0.77 Omega.cm for ZnO films deposited with 2 layers. Transmittance spectra show that the films were transparent in the visible range above 400nm with range of 86%-98% for the layer-by-layer ZnO films. The optical band gaps were between 3.2 to 3.3eV for both layer-by-layer and the reference samples. PL spectra indicate that layer-by-layer method improves the crystallinity of the films.