Abstract
Zinc oxide (ZnO) has attracted significant interest due to its exceptional material characteristics like its wide band gap (3.37 eV) and the high exciton binding energy. However, the application of ZnO is constrained by the difficulty in obtaining P-type samples. In this study, ptype ZnO thin films were fabricated using the co-doping technique with ZnO and AlN targets. Different RF powers were used for ZnO to deposite the films. However, the power on AlN target was fixed at 90 W. The structural, optical and electrical properties of the prepared films were inspected. The results of XRD showed that all the films exhibited ZnO (002) peak of wurzite structure. The UV emission peaks (3.24 eV-3.53 eV) identified in PL spectra is possibly due to the recombination of free excitons. The Raman peaks which shown at 576.22 cm(-1) and 274 cm(-1) denote ZnO:AlN and ZnO:N respectively. The Hall measurements of the films deposited at RF powers of 250 W and 200 W for ZnO target exhibited n-type conduction with corresponding mobilities of 2.75 cm(2) V-1 s(-1) and 1.58 cm(2) V-1 s(-1) respectively with electron concentrations of 2.35 x 10(18) cm(-3) and 5.26 x 10(18) cm(-3), respectively. However, the films deposited using RF powers of (150, 175) W and 225 W for ZnO target exhibited p-type conduction with hole concentrations of 2.14 x 10(17) cm(-3), 2.37 x 10(19) cm(-3) and 3.68 x 10(21) cm(-3) with corresponding mobilities of 9.21 cm(2) V-1 s(-1), 0.129 cm(2) V-1 s(-1) and 3.41 x 10(-3) cm(2) V-1 s(-1) respectively. Therefore, RF power values of (150, 175) W and 225 W might be ideal for dopants activation to obtain p-type ZnO. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University.