Luminescent Defects in ZnO Thin Films: Effect of the Deposition Temperature and Thermal Treatment

In this work, ZnO thin films were deposited by RF magnetron sputtering at substrate temperatures ranging from 100°C to 700°C. The Williamson-Hall's approximation through the uniform stress deformation model (USDM) allowed the estimation of the stress and the size of the wurtzite crystal phase in these films. The sample deposited at 700 °C exhibited the best crystallinity; then, it was subjected to thermal treatment at 900 °C and 1000 °C. This annealing process allowed to observe a relationship between the intensities of (103)/(002) XRD peaks with the visible/UV ratio photoluminescence peaks. This observation allows to estimate that the intensity of non-basal plane (103) is related to the generation of oxygen vacancies (V<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">O</inf>) defects in the ZnO films.