The role of Ga and Bi doping on the local structure of transparent zinc oxide thin films

• Autor(a) principal: Filipe Correia
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Joana Ribeiro, Alexei Kuzmin, Inga Pudza, Aleksandr Kalinko, Edmund Welter, Adélio Mendes, Joana Rodrigues, Nabiha Sedrine, Teresa Monteiro, Maria Correia, Carlos Tavares
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://hdl.handle.net/10216/140891
• topic: Química, Engenharia química; Chemistry, Chemical engineering

Transparent undoped ZnO and additionally doped with Ga and Bi thin films were produced by magnetron sputtering. The thin films were comprehensively characterized by X-ray absorption, X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), transmission and scanning transmission electron (TEM, STEM) microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. All undoped and doped films crystallise in a ZnO phase with the hexagonal wurtzite crystal structure. The local structure of the thin films was investigated by temperature-dependent X-ray absorption spectroscopy at the Zn and Ga K-edges, as well as at the Bi L3-edge. It was found that the doping of Ga3+ and Bi3+ ions in the ZnO wurtzite structure produces distinct effects on the thin film microstructure. The substitution of Zn2+ ions by smaller Ga3+ ions introduces a static disorder to the thin film structure, which is evidenced by an increase in the mean-square relative displacements σ2(Zn‒O) and σ2(Zn‒Zn). At the same time, large Bi3+ ions do not substitute zinc ions, but are likely located in the disordered environment at the ZnO grain boundaries. This conclusion was directly supported by energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy combined with TEM and STEM observations as well as by resonant and non-resonant μ-Raman experiments at room temperature, where the ZnO and ZnO:Bi spectra are similar, suggesting a lack of structural disorder in the wurtzite cell. On the other hand, the Raman disorder-activated phonon is pronounced for Ga-doping of the ZnO lattice, confirming the compositional disorder. Both XRD and XPS ruled out Ga2O3 phase in Ga-doped ZnO; conversely, Bi2O3 and a small amount of Bi‒metal phases are clearly discerned by XPS experiments, further suggesting that Bi is not incorporated in the ZnO wurtzite cell, but segregated to grain boundaries.