Effects of Deposition Temperature on the Properties of ZnO Films Grown by High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering

Thin film of zinc oxide (ZnO) has widely applied in many devices, such as solar cells[1], photoelectric devices[2], ferroelectric devices[3] owing to two most important properties: the direct wide bandgap of 3.37 eV at room temperature[4], and the large exciton binding energy of 60 meV[5]. As reported in the literature, the ZnO thin films have been prepared by various techniques, such as sol-gel[6], Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD)[7,8], Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE)[9,10], Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD)[11] and Magnetron Sputtering (MS)[12-20]. Regardless of sample preparation, the MS technique is believed to be one of the most efficient methods because of the high product ability and the easily controllable. Lots of works on the ZnO structural, morphological, optical properties and electrical properties affected by deposition temperature in MS technique were reported[16-23]. Moreover, the High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering (HiPIMS) technique, which is a promising method to prepare high quality thin films owing to a high metal ionLab of Plasma Physics and Materials, Beijing Institute of Graphic Communication, Beijing 102600, China