ROLE OF SOLUTION CONCENTRATION ON ZnO THIN FILMS PREPARED BY SILAR METHOD

Zinc Oxide (ZnO) thin films have been successfully coated onto glass substrates at various solutions concentration by Low cost SILAR coating technique. The film thickness was estimated using weight gain method and it revealed that the film thickness increased with solution concentration values. The prepared film structural, morphological, optical and electrical properties were studied using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and UV-Vis-NIR spectrophotometer respectively. The structure of the films were found to be hexagonal structure with polycrystalline in nature with preferential orientation along (002) plane. X-ray line profile analysis was used to evaluate the micro structural parameters such as crystallite size, micro strain, dislocation density and stacking fault probability. The crystallite size values are increased with increase of solution concentration values and maximum value of crystallite size was estimated at 29.23 nm at solution concentration of 0.3 M. Morphological results showed that the concentration of the solution has a marked effect on morphology of the ZnO thin films. The optical studies revealed that the band gap can be tailored between 3.2 eV to 3.6 eV by altering solution concentration. EDAX studies showed that the presence of Zinc and oxygen content.