Influence of the Fluorine-doping Concentration on Nanocrystalline ZnO Thin Films Deposited by Sol-gel Process

Wide band gap II-VI semiconductors have attracted the interest of many research groups during the past few years due to the possibility of their applications in light-emitting diodes and laser diodes. Among the II-VI semiconductors, ZnO is an important optoelectronic device material for use in the violet and blue regions because of its wide direct band gap (Eg ~3.37 eV) and large exciton binding energy (60 meV). F-doped ZnO (FZO) and undoped ZnO thin films were grown onto quartz substrate by the sol-gel spin-coating method. The doping level in the solution, designated by F/Zn atomic ratio of was varied from 0 to 5 in 1 steps. To investigate the effects of the structure and optical properties of FZO thin films were investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-visible spectroscopy, and photoluminescence (PL). In the XRD, the residual stress, FWHM, bond length, and average grain size were changed with increasing the doping concentration. For the PL spectra, the high INBE/IDLE ratio of the FZO thin films doping concentration at 1 at.% than the other samples.