Structure and optical properties of Mn doped ZnO thin films

Mn-doped ZnO thin films were prepared on SiO2 Substrate using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique in order to investigate the structure and optical properties of the films. XRD, AFM, EDX analysis and UV-VIS spectrophotometry were employed to characterize the Mn-doped ZnO films. The results showed that the shape of the XRD spectrum was remarkably similar to that of the un-doped ZnO film, indicating that the structure of the films was not disturbed by Mn-doping and the film also had mainly (103) peaks. The contents of (Zn, Mn) O thin films prepared by PLD were consistent with the targets, thus realizing the thin films deposition with same constitutuents as the target. The films had rather flat surfaces with the peak-to-tail roughness of about 80nm and an average grain diameter of about 25nm. Mn-doping changed the band gap of the films, which increased with the increase of the Mn content. Moreover, when the Mn content increased from 6% to 12% the absorbence in strong UV absorption band increased too.