Preparation and Characterization of Ag-doped ZnO Thin Film Deposited by Sol-gel-based Coating Method

Abstract

This work reports on the preparation of Ag-doped ZnO thin films deposited on glass substrate by sol-gel spin coating technique. Sol-gel spin coating is considered as a low cost and low-temperature processing for thin film fabrication technique that can be readily incorporated with variety of dopants. The ZnO thin films were fabricated using zinc acetate as a precursor via spin coating technique followed by annealing at 500°C for 2 h. The cathodic Ag dopant concentration was varied from 0 to 10 mol%. The influence of dopant concentration on structural, optical, and morphological were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectrophotometer, and field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM). The XRD results revealed hexagonal wurtzite structure of the prepared films with no impurity phase. The transmittance spectra show high transmittance above 90% in visible region. The ZnO thin film exhibited significant red shift in its band gap when the incorporated Ag doping concentration increased.