Effect of post annealing on structural properties of ZnO thin films deposited by thermal evaporation technique

The thermal evaporation deposition technique was used to produce zinc oxide thin film onto p-type silicon substrate at room temperature. The prepared film was post annealed at different temperature from 400 to 800degC in O₂ ambient atmosphere for 20 minutes. The effect of post annealing temperature on the structural properties and surface morphological of ZnO thin films have been studied by XRD and AFM respectively. XRD analysis reveals that the prepared films were polycrystalline in nature with c-axis orientation. The optical band gap and resistivity of ZnO thin film were estimated using UV-Visible and four probe measurements respectively.