Structural and morphological changes with substrate heating in zinc films synthesized by thermal vapor deposition technique

Zinc oxide (ZnO) films are used in numerous applications such as solar cells, gas sensors, nanogenerators, etc., owing to their large band gap, piezoelectric activity and versatile nanostructures. Deposition of zinc films and their subsequent oxidation is considered as one of the successful methods to obtain nanostructured ZnO films. It has been reported that the structural features of the oxide film depends on the characteristics of parent zinc film; which in turn depends on the deposition parameters. In the present work, zinc films were synthesized by thermal vacuum deposition route. In order to understand the effect of substrate heating during deposition, zinc films were deposited on glass with different substrate temperatures, in the range of room temperature to 180 °C. The structural and morphological properties of as-synthesized films were characterized by X-ray diffractometry (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) techniques. The XRD data confirmed that the as-synthesized films have strong (002) preferential orientation. Notable changes were observed such as change in crystallite size, texture coefficient and strain in the films, upon changing the substrate temperature. The morphology of as-synthesized zinc films found to consist of hexagonal-plate like structures. It was observed that the dimensions of the hexagonal-plates were changed in accordance with the substrate temperature. DSC results indicated a depression in the melting point of zinc films compared to bulk zinc and it is attributed to the nanoscale features constituting the film.