Improving the conductance of ZnO thin films by doping with Ti

Abstract The Ti-doped ZnO films were deposited onto Corning 7059 glass substrates using a magnetron co-sputtering process in a mixture of oxygen and argon gases. The experimental results show that the deposition rate increases approximately linearly with Ti target powers (DC) when lower than 300 W powers of them were applied. Only the (0 0 2) X-ray diffraction 2θ peak appears in the range of study. The incorporation of titanium atoms into zinc oxide films is obvious effectively, when Ti target power is above 250 W. The atomic percentage of titanium in ZnO films were measured to be 1.33 and 2.51% corresponding to 250 and 300 W of Ti target power, respectively. The resistivity of undoped ZnO films is high and reduces to a value of 3.78×10 −2 Ω cm when 2.5 at.% of Ti is incorporated. All of the zinc oxide films have 70–80% transmittance in the range of 400–700 nm. The optical energy gap increases with the amount of Ti in the ZnO films.