A Comparative Study of Structural and Optical Properties of ZnO Thin Film Prepared on Sapphire Substrate by PLD and Annealed

ZnO thin films are grown on sapphire substrate by employing a Nd:YAG (1064nm) laser ablation in 1.3 Pa oxygen ambient. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) observation show that as-grown thin film possess (0002) textured feature and form columnar inclined grains with a small size. The as-grown films show a little oxygen vacancies and Zn interstitial by the analysis of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Raman. The annealing treatment in oxygen ambient causes obvious improvement on the structure, surface morphology, compositions and optical properties by the analysis of XRD, AFM, XPS, Raman and photoluminescence (PL) spectra. It can be concluded that the increase of UV emission is oriented to the improvement of structure and decrease of intrinsic defects. The blue emission (430 nm) is attributed to the electronic transition from shallow donor level of Zn interstitial to top level of valence band.