Influence of Growth Temperature for Active Layer and Buffer Layer Thickness on ZnO Nanocrystalline Thin Films Synthesized Via PA-MBE

Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanocrystalline thin films on various growth temperatures for active layer and different buffer layer thickness were grown by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (PA-MBE) on Si substrates. The ZnO active layer were grown with various growth temperature from 500 to $800^{\circ}C$ and the ZnO buffer layer were grown for different time from 5 to 40 minutes. To investigate the structural and optical properties of the ZnO thin films, scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffractometer (XRD), and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy were used, respectively. In the SEM images, the ZnO thin films have high densification of grains and good roughness and uniformity at $800^{\circ}C$ for active layer growth temperature and 20 minutes for buffer layer growth time, respectively. The PL spectra of ZnO buffer layers and active layers display sharp near band edge (NBE) emissions in UV range and broad deep level emissions (DLE) in visible range. The intensity of NBE peaks for the ZnO thin films significantly increase with increase in the active layer growth temperature. In addition, the NBE peak at 20 minutes for buffer layer growth time has the largest emission intensity and the intensity of DLE peaks decrease with increase in the growth time.