Characterization of Pure and Al Doped ZnO Thin Films Prepared by Sol Gel Method for Solar Cell Applications

Bouacheria, M.A.; Djelloul, A.; Adnane, M.; Larbah, Y.; Benharrat, L.

doi:10.1007/s10904-022-02313-0

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Among reported methods, one finds laser deposition [14,15], sputtering [16], molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) [17], evaporation [18], chemical vapor deposition (CVD) [19], electrochemical deposition [20], doctor blade technique [21], chemical bath deposition (CBD) [22,23], chemical wet and dry (CWD) method [24], successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) method [25], spray pyrolysis [26][27][28][29], and sol-gel process including spin and dip-coating processes [30][31][32][33]. Due to its cheap manufacturing costs, effectiveness, simplicity, simple control of doping, broad area homogeneity, and crystalline consistency during the production of devices, the sol-gel dip-coating process is suited for thin film deposition [34,35].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electrical and Optical Properties of ZnO:Al/p-Si Heterojunction Diodes

Bouacheria,

Djelloul,

Benharrat

et al. 2024

Acta Phys. Pol. A

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The study examines the optical and electrical characteristics of n-ZnO:Al (AZO) thin films that were deposited on p-Si using the sol-gel dip-coating process, with thicknesses ranging from three to six cycles. The I-V characteristics of the diode device exhibited a high and low current under forward and reverse bias, respectively. The ideality factors were found to decrease from 2.78 to 2.13 with an increase in the number of layers from 3C to 6C. However, it was revealed that the barrier height increased from 0.72 to 0.79 eV. Similarly, the rectification ratio increased from 3196 at ±4 V to 5253 at ±4 V with an increase in the thickness of the emitter layer. Some diode parameters were calculated according to the thermionic and Chueng models and found to be in a range comparable to the literature. The optical study based on photoluminescence under UV excitation showed typical emission spectra of n-AZO/-Si heterostructure characterized by a high emission band around 389 nm, which is due to the recombination of excitons (e − /h + ). The various intrinsic defects present in ZnO-doped Al thin films are attributed to the broad emission band in the visible range. The chromaticity study with color properties indicated that the correlated color temperature value of the sample 3C (1380 K) falls in the warm white light region. However, the correlated color temperature value of sample 6C (4454 K) is located in the cool white light source region, which is more suitable as an LED lighting source. It was found that by increasing the emitter layer thickness, the correlated color temperature value of the 6C sample is getting closer to 6504 K -the Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage (CIE) standard for daylight (D65). However, unlike the Duv value of the 6C sample (0.011), the one of the 3C sample (0.0032) is located within the acceptable shift range (±0.006). Based on this study, these heterostructures might be an appealing option for manufacturing W-LEDs with n-UV/blue LED chips as the excitation source for use in displays and lighting.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electrical and Optical Properties of ZnO:Al/p-Si Heterojunction Diodes

Bouacheria,

Djelloul,

Benharrat

et al. 2024

Acta Phys. Pol. A

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“…Zinc oxide (ZnO) is one of the most important oxide transparent conductors (TCO) materials, because of their direct large band gap (Eg  3.37 eV), exciton band energy (60 meV) at room temperature [1,2], with a natural conductivity of type (n), besides its electrical conductibility along with its high transmittance in the visible region which make it a suitable material for optoelectronics [3,4] and solar cells [5,6]. ZnO thin films have been deposited using many techniques including chemical vapour deposition [7], chemical bath deposition [8], doctor Blade [9], electrochemical deposition [10], pulsed laser deposition [11], magnetron sputtering [12], spray pyrolysis [13][14][15] and sol-gel process [16][17][18]. This last is advantageous since it is simple technique, inexpensive and secure, that is also suitable for large area thin films preparation with homogenous doping level [19].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of Aluminum (Al: 0, 1, 2 and 3 wt.%) Doping on Electrical Properties of ZnO:Al/p-Si Heterojunction for Optoelectronic Applications

Bouacheria,

Djelloul,

Benharrat

et al. 2024

J. Nano- Electron. Phys.

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In this paper, the electrical properties different diodes were reported. Pure and Al-doped ZnO thin films of different concentrations (Al: 1, 2 and 3 wt.%) were deposited by sol-gel dip-coating onto p-Si substrate to form heterojunctions. Zinc acetate dehydrate, Hexahydrate aluminum chloride, ethanol and ethanolamine were used as a starting material, doping, solvent and stabilizer, respectively. The dip-coating process with drying was repeated 6 times to obtain multilayer films. The morphological and electrical properties of the thin films as a function of Al concentration have been investigated using atomic force microscopy (AFM) and current-voltage (I-V) measurements at room temperature. AFM images revealed that grain sizes and surface roughness increase with increasing Al concentration. I-V characteristics of the diodes exhibited high and low currents under forward and reverse bias, respectively. The ideality factors (n), rectification ratio (RR) and barrier heights (BH) were found to range from 1.97 to 8.34, 0.84 to 5958 and 0.80 to 0.86 eV for different Al doping concentrations, respectively. These findings showed no monotonic behaviour of the calculated parameters with varying Al doping concentrations. The best electrical characteristic was obtained for the sample n-ZnO: 2 % Al/p-Si, with an ideality factor of 1.97 eV, reversesaturation current of 1.6910 -8 A, rectification ratio of 5958 at ± 2 V, and barrier height of 0.85 eV.

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“…Many studies feature the Al-doped ZnO thin films (AZO) as an efficient alternative to ITO films due to their facile preparation and the low cost of the raw materials [30][31][32]. AZO films can be manufactured by different deposition methods such as sol-gel [30,[33][34][35], spray pyrolysis [27], chemical bath deposition [36], RF sputtering [37,38], atomic layer [39] and pulsed laser deposition [40]. The sol-gel synthesis displays a series of advantages such as cost effectiveness, ease of preparation, stoichiometry, homogeneity, viscosity and thickness control, lower working temperatures and the use of a higher concentration of dopant [41].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The UV band can be assigned to the near-band-edge (NBE) emission or to the related recombination of free excitons, while the visible bands are ascribed to the defects in ZnO, such as oxygen vacancies (V O ), zinc vacancies (V Zn ), Zn interstitials (Zn i ) and oxygen atoms at zinc position in crystal lattices (O Zn ) [57]. According to the literature, the performance of AZO thin films was explored by varying several parameters such as substrate [58][59][60] and solvent type [29,52], dopant concentration [34,61], annealing temperature [62] and thickness (number of layers) [31]. It was observed that the PL properties are strongly influenced by the previously mentioned factors, especially by the type of substrate used [63], amount of dopant [54][55][56] and annealing temperature [64].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of Al Incorporation on the Structural and Optical Properties of Sol–Gel AZO Thin Films

et al. 2023

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ZnO and Al-doped ZnO (AZO) thin films were prepared using the sol–gel method and deposited on a Silicon (Si(100)) substrate using the dipping technique. The structure, morphology, thickness, optical constants in the spectral range 300–1700 nm, bandgap (Eg) and photoluminescence (PL) properties of the films were analyzed using X-ray diffractometry (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE), Raman analysis and PL spectroscopy. The results of the structure and morphology analyses showed that the thin films are polycrystalline with a hexagonal wurtzite structure, as well as continuous and homogeneous. The PL background and broader peaks observable in the Raman spectra of the AZO film and the slight increase in the optical band gap of the AZO thin film, compared to undoped ZnO, highlight the effect of defects introduced into the ZnO lattice and an increase in the charge carrier density in the AZO film. The PL emission spectra of the AZO thin film showed a strong UV line corresponding to near-band-edge ZnO emission along with weak green and red emission bands due to deep-level defects, attributed to the oxygen-occupied zinc vacancies (OZn lattice defects).

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Characterization of Pure and Al Doped ZnO Thin Films Prepared by Sol Gel Method for Solar Cell Applications

Cited by 6 publications

References 60 publications

Electrical and Optical Properties of ZnO:Al/p-Si Heterojunction Diodes

Electrical and Optical Properties of ZnO:Al/p-Si Heterojunction Diodes

Effect of Aluminum (Al: 0, 1, 2 and 3 wt.%) Doping on Electrical Properties of ZnO:Al/p-Si Heterojunction for Optoelectronic Applications

Effect of Al Incorporation on the Structural and Optical Properties of Sol–Gel AZO Thin Films

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