Room temperature deposition of p-type arsenic doped ZnO polycrystalline films by laser-assist filtered cathodic vacuum arc technique

The use of combined filtered cathodic vacuum arc (FCVA) technique and laser ablation to fabricate high-quality As doped ZnO (ZnO:As) films at room temperature is proposed. This is possible because FCVA technique is capable of realizing high-quality undoped ZnO films with extremely high resistivity (i.e., extremely low concentration of Zn interstitials) at low deposition temperature. In addition, laser ablation allows the generation of As plume to react with Zn ion species and O-2 inside the FCVA chamber to form ZnO:As films. It was shown that high-quality p-type ZnO:As film with a resistivity of 0.05 Omega cm, a mobility of 2 cm(2)/V s, and a hole concentration of 4x10(19) cm(-3) was obtained at room temperature by using the proposed deposited technique. X-ray photoemission spectroscopy analysis has indicated that complex of As substitutional Zn induces two Zn vacancies (i.e., As-Zn-2V(Zn) complex), which is likely to be the defect contributing to the formation of shallow acceptor lever inside the ZnO:As films. Furthermore, In/Au Ohmic contacts deposited on p-type ZnO:As films and p-n ZnO based homojunction have been fabricated using plastic as the substrate. (C) 2007 American Institute of Physics.