Effect Of Swift Heavy Ion On Structural And Optical Properties Of Undoped And Doped Nanocrystalline Zinc Oxide Films

¹Materials Science Group, Inter University Accelerator Centre, Aruna Asaf Ali Marg New Delhi 110 067, India

²Department of Electronic Science, Maharaja Agrasen College University of Delhi 110 096, India

³Department of Physics, Gurukula Kangri University, Haridwar 249 404, India

Adv. Mater. Lett., 2013, Ion Beam Special Issue, 4 (6), pp 423-427

DOI: 10.5185/amlett.2012.ib.107

Publication Date (Web): Mar 16, 2013

Copyright © IAAM-VBRI Press

E-mail: vinod.phy@gmail.com

Abstract

Swift heavy ion (SHI) induced modification in structural and optical properties of undoped and doped nanocrystalline (nc) ZnO films deposited by sol-gel method are investigated. These nanocrystalline films were irradiated by MeV ions of Au, Ag and Ni at various ion fluences. The structural properties were studied using X-ray diffraction and it shows that the average crystallite size of ZnO films is observed to increase by the irradiation. The atomic force microscopy (AFM) study of films shows that the roughness of the films varies with increase in the fluence. A maximum transmittance is observed to be 85% in the visible region for doped films. It is also shown that the bandgap of undoped and doped ZnO films is varied using SHI irradiation. The modifications of structural and optical properties are explained in terms of thermal spikes induced by SHIs.

Keywords

nc-ZnO, swift heavy ion, sol-gel, band gap narrowing and widening, ZnO:B.