Improvement in optical and elemental properties of spin-on phosphorus doped ZnO film

SOD is a type of conventional doping technique where diffusion of dopant atom takes place from the liquid source to film by thermal annealing of sample. The study shows the SOD process is a cost effective, less destructive and an efficient way to dope ZnO film. We have doped ZnO films with phosphorus atom by simply annealing it in atmospheric furnace up to 600°C for 4 hrs. After in-situ annealing SOD process, sample has also been ex-situ annealed at 900°C in oxygen ambient for 10 secs. The elemental analysis of phosphorus 2p peak at 132.62 eV ensures the existence of P-O bond for doped sample which shows phosphorus replacing Zn and bonding with oxygen in to the lattice in order to make Pzn-2Vzn an acceptor complex. The doped samples showed the photoluminescence peak at 3.32eV and 3.35eV, which attributed to free electron to acceptor (FA) and acceptor-bound exciton (A0X) energy as an evidence of acceptor doping in ZnO film. The ex-situ annealing of doped sample further improves in passivation of deep level defects of film. All sample has (002) orientation, and a compressive stress to be found in the doped sample due to phosphorus replacing Zn, are confirmed by analysis of XRD results.