Electrical properties of zinc oxide sputtered thin films

ZnO thin films were deposited on silicon substrate by rf magnetron sputtering from metallic zinc target. The electrical properties of ZnO are currently being studied. In this work, measurements of the ac conductivity properties of ZnO sandwich structures with silver and platinum electrodes are reported. The frequency dependence of both the ac conductivity and dielectric constant of thin films of ZnO have been investigated in the frequency range 5 kHz-13 MHz. It is shown that the total ac conductivity sigma(omega), obeys the equation sigma(omega) = Aomega(S) where s is an index which increases with frequency and decreases with temperature. It appears that for ZnO films, the conduction mechanism is thermally activated and both the overlap large polaron tunnelling and the correlated barrier-hopping of charge carrier over localized states fit the experimental data. The dielectric constant, epsilon(r), lies in the range 8-9 at room temperature and is independent of the frequency in the dielectric thin films. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.