Dominant shallow donors in zinc oxide layers obtained by low-temperature atomic layer deposition: Electrical and optical investigations

Abstract This work is focused on the electrical and optical analyses used to estimate the activation energy of the dominant shallow donor in thin ZnO films obtained at low temperature by the atomic layer deposition process. These two approaches, based on the temperature-dependent classical Hall effect and photoluminescence investigations, yielded a donor activation energy ED in the range of 30–40 meV, including the estimated error margins. This value, as confirmed by layer composition studies, is attributed to the presence of zinc atoms in the interstitial positions of the ZnO lattice.