An investigation of the electrical properties of p-type Al:N Co-doped ZnO thin films

In this paper, we report the fabrication of p-type ZnO thin films through co-doping of nitrogen (N) and aluminium (Al). The thin films are fabricated on Si/SiO 2 and glass substrates by using the spin-coating method and are further subjected to annealing at different temperatures (300, 400, and 500 °C). The thin films possess transparence above 90% in the visible region, and the calculated band gap value increases with increasing annealing temperature. The current-voltage characteristics of the films show a typical non-linear rectifying behavior. The field-effect transfer characteristics of the prepared films confirm p-type semiconducting property with carrier concentrations of 5.10, 24.39, and 77.97 × 10 15 cm −3 and carrier mobilities of 3.765, 1.861, and 3.647 × 10 2 cm 2 /V·s for different annealing temperatures. The effects of annealing temperature on the electrical and the optical properties of the p-type ZnO thin films are discussed in detail.