The Influence of Different Stabilizers on Properties of Sol–Gel Spin-Coated Zinc Oxide Films

Zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films have been deposited onto fluorine-doped tin oxide substrates (FTO) using sol–gel spin-coating technique with different sol stabilizers. The effect of sol stabilizers on structural, morphological, optical, and photoelectrochemical properties of the ZnO films was investigated. XRD analysis shows that all ZnO films have a polycrystalline hexagonal wurtzite structure with a preferred growth orientation along the (101), and the average of crystallites size varies from 46,277 to 82,266 nm. Room temperature photoluminescence (PL) spectra indicate a UV emission at around 380 nm originated from nearby band-edge transitions. Also, we investigated the effects of sol-stabilizers on the photoelectrochemical (PEC) properties of all ZnO photoanodes, and the best photocurrent density was evaluated at around 1710–4 A cm−2. Finally, donor density and flat-band potential of the different ZnO elaborated photoanodes were deduced from the Mott-Schottky plots.