Electrical parameters of ZnO films and ZnO-based junctions obtained by atomic layer deposition

This work reports on the zinc oxide layers grown by atomic layer deposition (ALD) from dimethylzinc (Zn(CH3)2, DMZn) or diethylzinc (Zn(C2H5)2, DEZn) and deionized water precursors. These films are suitable for nanoelectronic applications, e.g. selecting elements in the new generation of non-volatile 3D memories constructed in the cross-bar architecture. This architecture imposes strict requirements on the parameters of obtained ZnO layers. Growth temperature must be below 200 °C, electron concentration not higher than 1017 cm−3 and mobility above 10 cm2 V−1 s−1. This is possible when the ALD growth method is used. We demonstrate the correlations between the structural, optical and electrical properties of ALD-ZnO layers. Their control allows us to obtain Schottky junctions with silver, whose parameters are suitable for the applications mentioned above. The ideality factor of about η ≈ 2.65 was calculated for the Schottky diodes based on the pure thermionic emission theory.