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Electrochemically deposited ZnO films: an XPS study on the evolution of their surface hydroxide and defect composition upon thermal annealing

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Abstract

Electrodeposition from ZnCl2 aqueous solution was performed to grow ZnO thin films on the surface of polycrystalline copper plates. Electrochemical parameters for deposition were optimized by means of cyclic voltammetry (CV). The morphology of the deposits was studied via scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and their chemical composition was ascertained by means of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The effects of changing the deposition bath temperature (T bath) and the role played by post-deposition treatments, such as temperature and time of annealing in air, were studied. SEM images of freshly deposited vs. annealed samples have shown that in the former case the films display a rough morphology with mixed grain/hexagonal platelets structures and in the latter smaller but more uniformly dispersed cubic grains. T bath is found to be the key parameter to induce the different morphology in the deposited films, which reflects in a different chemical reactivity of surface species, as found on the basis of the binding energies and relative quantitative ratios between Zn 2p and O 1s peaks. In fact, a higher T bath favours a more efficient desorption of OH groups upon annealing, the O 1s peak resulting to much more drastically modified oxide/hydroxide intensity ratio with respect to the case of the sample deposited at lower T bath.

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Notes

  1. The contribution of loosely bound oxygen species, such as H2O, is neglected in the following discussion.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Dr. Daniela Ferro for her kind assistance in taking the SEM images.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Chimica, “Sapienza” Università di Roma, P.le Aldo Moro 5, 00185, Rome, Italy

    Andrea Giacomo Marrani, Fabrizio Caprioli, Alice Boccia, Robertino Zanoni & Franco Decker

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  1. Andrea Giacomo Marrani
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  2. Fabrizio Caprioli
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  3. Alice Boccia
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Correspondence to Andrea Giacomo Marrani.

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Marrani, A.G., Caprioli, F., Boccia, A. et al. Electrochemically deposited ZnO films: an XPS study on the evolution of their surface hydroxide and defect composition upon thermal annealing. J Solid State Electrochem 18, 505–513 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10008-013-2281-2

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