Thermal Annealing-Activated Crystallinity Metastasis of Al:ZnO Thin Films

Abstract

Multilayered thin films of aluminum-doped ZnO (Al:ZnO) have been deposited by the sol-gel dip coating technique. Experimental results indicated that the thermal annealing temperature affected the crystallinity of the Al:ZnO films. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis showed that thin films were preferentially orientated along the c-axis plane. The preferred orientation along (0 0 2) plane becomes more pronounced as the thermal annealing being increased. The film thickness ranges between 180 and 690 nm. In our experiments, the most optimum condition of Al:ZnO annealing temperature was both 500 oC.