Influence of annealing and optical aging on optical and structural properties of ZnO thin films obtained by SILAR method

Abstract

In this study, zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films are deposited on fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) substrates by using a successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) method. One of the samples is not annealed and others are annealed at 200, 400 and 600 °C, and all the samples are aged under ultraviolet (UV) light for 19 h. These samples are used to investigate the effect of annealing and aging on the properties of ZnO. Structural properties of the ZnO thin films are examined with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Photoluminescence, transmittance and absorption measurements are used to observe the optical properties of the films. In the literature, there is no study investigating the effect of aging on ZnO thin films deposited with the SILAR method, hence this study fills the gap in the literature.