Hydrogen doping of MgO thin films prepared by pulsed laser deposition

Abstract Hydrogen doped MgO films were grown by pulsed laser deposition method. Gaseous hydrogen stored in cavities of milky MgO single crystal targets provided doping in film deposition process. Clear MgO targets without hydrogen were used in the preparation of reference films. The influence of hydrogen doping on firing voltage (FV) of gas discharge and its AC frequency dependence was investigated. According to thermoluminescence experiments, the films grown from milky targets contained two kinds of electron traps with the activation energies of 0.051 and 0.31 eV, while latter traps were absent in reference samples. The 0.31 eV trap was assigned to the hydride ion H − occupying an oxygen vacancy site in MgO crystal structure. Using standard gas mixture (Ne–10% Xe), FVs of hydrogen doped sample showed considerable frequency dependence and were up to 55 V lower in comparison to the reference sample. The FVs of reference sample were shifted 14–28 V to higher values when N 2 gas was added to the mixture. The N 2 addition lowered the FVs of hydrogen doped sample up to 38 V and almost eliminated the FV frequency dependence.