About the project
The project focuses on fundamental issues regarding ion-beam nanostructuring of single-crystalline zinc oxide (ZnO), which is a novel semiconductor with great prospects in application areas such as photovoltaics, photonics and spintronics. The most economical way to produce ZnO is by the hydrothermal growth technique (HT) but the downside of the HT method is high concentrations of impurities, mainly Li.
The use of ion beams in semiconductor science and technology has been a success story since the early 1960's for controlled doping, and currently, we are entering a new exciting era where ion beams are exploited for nanostructuring of materials utilizing the inherent dimensions of ion-induced atomic collision cascades (typically, from a few nm to ~1000 nm). The first results in the project show that ion implantation induces small clusters of zinc vacancies which grow in size upon annealing at temperatures above 600 C. These 'big' clusters, containing at least 3-4 zinc vacancies, are stable up to 1000 C and they are observed to getter detrimental impurities, like Li, in the ZnO crystal.
Further, Li and sodium (Na) are found to exhibit a strong interaction where Na on Zn-site has a lower formation energy than Li on Zn-site resulting in a large fraction of highly mobile interstitial Li atoms even in n-type material. Also Na is observed to be rather mobile with a challenging diffusion mechanism depending on the Li concentration in the material. These results show promise in realizing p-type ZnO by nanostructuring using ion beams; p-type ZnO is a requisite to explore the full potential of the material with respect to high-efficient future generations of solar cells and high-efficient light emitting devices operating in the ultra-violet wavelength regime.
Objectives
The principal objective is to modify electrical, optical and magnetic properties of single-crystalline thin film and bulk ZnO by nano-scale defect engineering using energetic ion beams. A main subgoal is to understand and control the role of vacancy complexes (especially zinc vacancies) and their interaction with group 1 and V dopant elements and vital impurities like hydrogen and transition metals. Ultimately, 'tuning' of these vacancy clusters may lead to controllable p-type doping of ZnO by ion implantation.
Financing
The Research Counsil of Norway