Donor-like defects in ZnO substrate materials and ZnO thin films

We have investigated donor-like defects in ZnO substrate material grown by three different methods, and in epitaxial ZnO thin films grown on sapphire by pulsed laser deposition. Temperature dependent Hall effect measurements yield information about dominant donors. The thermal activation energies lie in a wide range from about 20 meV to about 370 meV. Deep level transient spectroscopy is used to obtain parameters of deep donor-like defects. For that, a high-speed diode contact configuration was laid out for the epitaxial thin films in order to determine the defect parameters with high precision. The identified levels are E1, E3 and E4, though the level E4 is observed only in single crystals grown by seeded chemical vapor transport.