Effect of heat treatment on microstructural and optical properties of CBD grown Al-doped ZnO thin films

Investigations on the effect of annealing temperature on the structural, optical properties and morphology of Al-doped ZnO thin films deposited on glass substrate by chemical bath deposition have been carried out. X-ray diffraction studies revealed that deposited films are in polycrystalline nature with hexagonal structure along the (0 0 2) crystallographic plane. Microstructural properties of films such as crystallite size, texture coefficient, stacking fault probability and microstrain were calculated from predominant (0 0 2) diffraction lines. The UV–Vis–NIR spectroscopy studies revealed that all the films have high optical transmittance (>60%) in the visible range. The optical band gap values are found to be in the range of 3.25–3.31 eV. Optical constants have been estimated and the values of n and k are found to increase with increase of heat treatment. The films have increased transmittance with increase of heat treatment. Al-doped ZnO thin films fabricated by this simple and economic chemical bath deposition technique without using any carrier gas are found to be good in structural and optical properties which are desirable for photovoltaic applications. Scanning electron microscopic images revealed that the hexagonal shaped grains that occupy the entire surface of the film with its near stoichiometric composition.