Effects of Pressure Dependence on Nanocolumnar Zinc Oxide Deposited by RF Magnetron Sputtering

Nanocolumnar zinc oxide (ZnO) was deposited on glass substrates by RF magnetron sputtering.It was performed with a ZnO target at RF power of 200 W. The deposition wascarried out in argon and oxygen ambient at the ratio of 10 and 5 sccmrespectively, with total deposition time of 1 hour. The growth temperature wasfixed at 500°C and deposition pressure specified at 3, 5 and 10 mTorr. It wasobserved that the morphological and photoluminescence properties of ZnOstrongly dependent on the deposition pressure. The ZnO mean grain area was inverselyrelated with the surface roughness. The best morphological andphotoluminescence properties was found to be associated with ZnO grown at 10mTorr. Smooth ZnO surface and lowest defects related emission in PL wasobtained for the respective sample.