Secondary Electron Emission of ZnO Films

We investigated secondary electron emission characteristics of ZnO thin films prepared by pulsed laser deposition method with respect to the ambient oxygen pressure and the substrate temperature during the deposition. X-ray diffraction, UV-Vis spectrometry, atomic force microscopy, and γ-FIB were used to examine the structural, optical transmission, surface morphology, and secondary electron emission properties of the films, respectively. The secondary electron emission coefficient of the ZnO films increases as the O/Zn ratio of the films increases which was thought to result from either the ambient oxygen pressure increase or the substrate temperature decrease and as the grain size of the films decreases. It was confirmed that ZnO has better secondary electron emission characteristics than those of MgO, which is currently widely used as a material for PDP protecting layers.