Abstract
The electrical properties of the Nickel doped cupric oxide Ni-CuO thin films with various doping concentrations of Ni (0, 20, 30, 70, and 80%) are investigated at two different annealing temperatures; 200 and 400 degrees C. The electrical properties of the films; namely thermal activation energy and electrical energy gap are calculated and compared. We find that for the non-annealed Ni-CuO films, both thermal activation energy and electrical energy gap are decreased by increasing the doping concentration, while for the annealed films, the increase in the Ni doping results in the increase in thermal activation energy and electrical energy gap for most of the Ni-CuO films. We also observe that for a particular concentration, the annealing at 200 degrees C produces lower thermal activation energy and electrical energy gap than the annealing at 400 degrees C. We obtained two values of the activation energy varying from -5.52 to -0.51 eV and from 0.49 to 3.36 eV, respectively, for the annealing at 200 and 400 degrees C. We also obtained two values of the electrical bandgap varying from -11.05 to -1.03 eV and from 0.97 to 6.71 eV, respectively, for the annealing at 200 and 400 degrees C. It is also noticeable IP: 111 93 14 78 On: Wed 09 Jun 202 06:11 19 that the increase in the doping concentration reduces the activation energy, and hence the electrical bandgap Copyright: American Scientific Publishers energies.