Boron Doping Effects on the Structural and Optical Properties of Sol-Gel Transparent ZnO Films

Abstract

In this study, undoped and B-doped ZnO thin films were successfully deposited on the glass substrates by a sol-gel spin coating method. The influence of doping concentrations and the annealing temperature effects on the structural and optical properties of ZnO thin films were investigated. All of films exhibited polycrystalline structure, with a preferential growth along the c-axis plane and the optical transparency with visible transmittance was higher than 90%. The crystallite size was calculated using a well-known Scherrer’s formula and found to be in the range of 11-18 nm. The optical band gap of these films were determined and compared with those obtained for undoped ZnO thin film.