Temperature stability of ZnO-based Love wave biosensor with SiO2 buffer layer

Study of I‐V characteristics of ZnO film on Si substrate with Ag buffer layer by C‐AFM

“…However, when ZnO thin films are deposited on Si substrates or annealed at high temperature, Si atoms on the substrate surface are easy to “capture” oxygen atoms from ZnO thin films (Nakamura et al , 2002), which makes oxygen vacancies in the films increase greatly and consequently deteriorates the quality of the ZnO thin films. Therefore, some buffer layers, such as Zn (Lee et al , 2008), Ti (Li et al , 2006), Pt (Yamada et al , 2004), Ru (Kim et al , 2006), SiC (Zhao et al , 2009), TiO 2 (Xu et al , 2008), CaO (Lim et al , 2010), MgO (Chen et al , 2001), CaF 2 (Koike et al , 2004), ITO (Vinodkumar et al , 2010), SiO 2 (Chen and Liu, 2009), Al 2 O 3 (Kim et al , 2010), ZnS (Wang et al, 2011), AlN (Wang et al , 2005), and GaN (Sahoo et al , 2008), have been introduced to prevent the Si substrate surface from being oxidized at the initial growth stage of the ZnO thin films. However, as far as our knowledge, few reports have mentioned the influence of noble metal buffer layer (Au, Ag, Pt) on the structure and I‐V properties of ZnO thin films.…”