Nanocrystalline Zn1-xMnxO thin filmbased transparent Schottky diodes

Highly transparent and nanocrystalline Zn1-xMnxO (x= 0, 0.008, 0.017, 0.046) thin films have been synthesized by sol-gel spin coating technique on glass and SnO2 coated glass substrates. The microstructural and compositional analyses confirm the incorporation of Mn in hexagonal ZnO lattice without affecting its structure. Zn1-xMnxO thin films are highly transparent in the visible region of electromagnetic spectrum. The optical band gap, estimated from the transmittance spectra, decreases from 3.32 to 3.21 eV with the increase in Mn content in ZnO films. Photoluminescence study reveals that Mn introduces more defects in ZnO suppressing the excitonic recombination by the defect center (oxygen vacancy) induced recombination. The non-linear current-voltage characteristics at room temperature reveal Schottky barrier junction formation of Zn1-xMnxO films with Ag. The diode parameters, extracted from the thermionic emission model, vary with Mn incorporation in ZnO. Both the ideality factor and potential barrier height decrease from 6.5 and 0.63 for pure ZnO to 4.7 and 0.54 respectively, for Zn0.954Mn0.046O film. The series resistance that arises from the defect distributions at the interface and effects the charge transport through the junction, also decreases for higher percentage of Mn in Zn1-xMnxO thin films. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.