ZnO process flow

1. Obtain a p-type silicon wafer without silicon dioxide with resistivity around 5

-cm and thickness of about 380m. [3]

2. Prepare DI water in a beaker and add ammonium hydroxide (NH4OH) and

hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) to the water in a ratio of 5:1:1.

3. Set the hot plate to 80 and put the beaker on the hot plate.

4. Wait 10 minutes for the solution to heat up and then put the wafer into the

beaker.

5. Leave wafer in the beaker for 15 minutes and then transfer it to a DI water

bath.

6. Prepare another beaker of DI water adding HF in a 50:1 ratio.

7. Put the wafer into the HF solution for 15 seconds, then rinse it with DI water.

8. Prepare another beaker, adding DI water, hydrochloric acid, and hydrogen

peroxide in a 6:1:1 ratio.

9. Put the beaker on the hot plate and wait 15 minutes for it to heat up to 80.

10. Put the wafer into the solution for 15 minutes.

11. Rinse and dry the wafer. Wait for the solutions to cool before aspirating and

rinsing the containers used.

12. Dissolve zinc acetate dehydrate [Zn(CH 3COO)22H2O) in a mixture of

isopropyl alcohol (C3H8O) and diethanolamine [HN(CH2CH2OH)2]. The molar ratio

of diethanolamine to zinc acetate should be 1:1 and the concentration of zinc

acetate should be about 0.14 M. [4]

13. Continue stirring for 2 hours until a transparent and homogeneous solution

is obtained. [4]

14. Place the wafer onto the spinner for spin coating and use a pipette to coat

the top of the wafer with the ZnO solution.

15. Spin at 3000 rpm for 20 seconds. [1]

16. Heat the wafer on a hot plate for 15 minutes at 250. [4]

17. Use a thickness measuring tool to measure the thickness of the ZnO film.

18. Repeat the spin-coating and heating of the wafer as many times as needed

to obtain the desired thickness of film (~300 nm). [4]

19. Anneal the wafer in air at 650 for 1 hour. [1]

20. Use thermal evaporation to deposit interdigitated electrodes of Al on the

wafer using a shadow mask. The electrodes should be around 500m long and

5m wide, with 5m of spacing between them. [2]

21. Use a scanning electron microscope to look at the surface morphology.

22. Use x-ray diffraction to study the crystalline structure of the film.

23. Use a semiconductor parameter analyzer to obtain I-V characteristics both

when the device is illuminated and when it is not.

24. Use a 365 nm wavelength UV lamp to see the photoresponse of the device.

References

[1] Y.-S. Kim, W.-P. Tai, and S.-J. Shu, "Effect of preheating temperature on
structural and optical properties of ZnO thin films by solgel process," Thin Solid
Films, vol. 491, no. 1-2, pp. 153160, Nov. 2005.

[2] S. Singh, "Al doped ZnO based metalsemiconductormetal and metal

insulatorsemiconductorinsulatormetal UV sensors," Optik - International
Journal for Light and Electron Optics, vol. 127, no. 7, pp. 35233526, Apr. 2016.

[3] S. K. Singh, P. Hazra, S. Tripathi, and P. Chakrabarti, "Fabrication and

experimental characterization of a solgel derived nanostructured n-ZnO/p-Si
heterojunction diode," Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics, vol.
26, no. 10, pp. 78297836, Jul. 2015.

[4] A. B. Yadav, A. Pandey, D. Somvanshi, and S. Jit, "Sol-Gel-Based highly

sensitive Pd/n-ZnO thin film/n-Si Schottky ultraviolet Photodiodes," IEEE
Transactions on Electron Devices, vol. 62, no. 6, pp. 18791884, Jun. 2015.