Synthesis and characterization of sputtered nanostructured ZnO films: Effect of deposition time and pressure on contact angle behavior of ethylene glycol and water

¹CHAMOS Matrusanstha, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chandubhai S. Patel Institute of Technology (CSPIT), Charotar University of Science and Technology (CHARUSAT), Changa, 388421, India

²McMaster Manufacturing Research Institute, Department of Mechanical Engineering, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4L7, Canada

Adv. Mater. Lett., 2017, 8 (2), pp 101-106

DOI: 10.5185/amlett.2017.6472

Publication Date (Web): Dec 27, 2016

Copyright © IAAM-VBRI Press

E-mail: sushantrawal@outlook.com

Abstract

This paper is aimed to explore structural, optical and wettability aspects of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanostructured thin films prepared by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering from a zinc target using gas mixtures of helium and oxygen. The increase of deposition time from 40 to 110 minutes improves evolution of (100), (002) and (110) peaks for ZnO films whereas its (101) peak is evident at deposition time of 110 minutes. At sputtering pressure of 0.5Pa only (100) and (110) peaks are observed. The crystallinity of ZnO films decreases as the sputtering pressure is increased from 0.5 to 8.0Pa. The average crystallite size of films increases from 14nm to 18nm when deposition time is increased from 40 to 110 minutes and from 11nm to 17nm when deposition pressure is raised from 0.5Pa to 8.0Pa. We have studied wettability of water and ethylene glycol for deposited nanostructured ZnO films. The maximum value of contact angle; transmission and energy band gap were 106˚, 87% and 3.27eV respectively for deposited nanostructured thin films.

Keywords

ZnO, sputtering, optical, wettability, contact angle.