Temperature/Doping-Dependency of the Electrical Properties of the Nickel Doped Copper Oxide Thin Films

Abstract

The electrical properties of the Nickel doped cupric oxide Ni-CuO thin films with various doping concentrations of Ni (0, 20, 30, 70, and 80%) are investigated at two different annealing temperatures; 200 and 400 °C. The electrical properties of the films; namely thermal activation energy and electrical energy gap are calculated and compared. We find that for the non-annealed Ni-CuO films, both thermal activation energy and electrical energy gap are decreased by increasing the doping concentration, while for the annealed films, the increase in the Ni doping results in the increase in thermal activation energy and electrical energy gap for most of the Ni-CuO films. We also observe that for a particular concentration, the annealing at 200 °C produces lower thermal activation energy and electrical energy gap than the annealing at 400 °C. We obtained two values of the activation energy varying from -5.52 to -0.51 eV and from 0.49 to 3.36 eV, respectively, for the annealing at 200 and 400 °C. We also obtained two values of the electrical bandgap varying from -11.05 to -1.03 eV and from 0.97 to 6.71 eV, respectively, for the annealing at 200 and 400 °C. It is also noticeable that the increase in the doping concentration reduces the activation energy, and hence the electrical bandgap energies.