Annealing impact on the structural and photoluminescence properties of ZnO thin films on Ag substrates

Abstract In this work, ZnO thin films were prepared by sol–gel method on Ag substrates. The structural and optical properties of the films annealed at different temperatures were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and photoluminescence, respectively. The results of XRD showed that all the ZnO thin films had a wurtzite phase and were preferentially oriented along the c -axis direction. The sample annealed at 400 °C exhibited better crystalline quality than the ZnO thin film directly deposited on a Si substrate annealed at the same temperature. The photoluminescence spectra showed that ZnO thin films had an ultraviolet emission band and three visible emission bands including green, yellow and red band. The sample annealed at 400 °C exhibited a stronger green emission and a weaker ultraviolet emission compared with the ZnO thin film deposited on a Si substrate annealed at the same temperature. The difference of the luminescence properties was thought to be originated from different substrates. As for the ZnO films on Ag substrates, the increase of annealing temperature led to different changes of visible emissions; namely, the green emission was enhanced rapidly, the yellow emission was increased slowly and the red emission was slowly increased first and then decreased. These changes of visible emissions under different annealing temperatures were attributed to the variations of defects density in ZnO.