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Femtosecond (fs) pulsed laser deposition (fs-PLD) of ZnO thin film on borosilicate glass substrates is reported in this work. The effect of important fs-PLD parameters like targetsubstrate distance, laser pulse energy, and substrate temperature on structure, morphology, optical transparency and luminescence of as deposited films is discussed.XRD analysis reveals that all the films grown using the laser energy range 120 J to 230 J are polycrystalline when they are deposited at room temperature in a ~ 10 -5 Torr vacuum. Introducing 0.7 mTorr oxygen pressure, the films show preferred c-axis growth and transforms into a single crystal like film when the substrate temperature is increased to 100 °C. The Scanning Electron Micrographs show the presence of sma ll nano size grains at 25 °C, which grow in size to the regular hexagonal shape particles at 100 °C.Optical transmission of the ZnO film is found to increase with an increase in crystal quality.Maximum transmittance of 95% in the wavelength range 400-1400 nm is achieved for films deposited at 100 °C employing a laser pulse energy of 180 J. The luminescence spectra show a strong UV emission band peaked at 377 nm close to the ZnO band gap.The shallow donor defects increase at higher pulse energies and higher substrate temperatures, which give rise to violet-blue luminescence. The results indicate that nanocrystalline ZnO thin films with high crystalline quality and optical transparency can be fabricated by using pulses from fs lasers.

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