Engineering of Wet Chemically Grown Nanostructured Zinc Oxide Thin Film by High Electronic Excitation.

Thin films of ZnO are synthesized on ITO substrate using successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) technique. The as-grown thin films were annealed at 250 °C (pristine) in vacuum atmosphere (10-2 Torr) for 1 h and further irradiated using 120 MeV Au9+ ions with different fluence 3×1012 and 5×1012 ions/cm2. These pristine and irradiated samples were studied for structural and optoelectronic properties. XRD study reveals better crystalline quality of film at 3×1012 ions/cm2 fluence. On the other hand, electrical resistivity of the films decreases from 13.44 Ω-cm to 3.74 Ω-cm with increase in irradiation fluence. Also it appears that irradiation does not affect absorption edge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]