Effect of Glow-discharge Hydrogen Plasma Treatment on Zinc Oxide Layers Prepared through Pulsed Electrochemical Deposition and via SILAR Method

Abstract

In this work, we investigated the effect of glow-discharge H₂⁺ plasma treatment on ZnO layers deposited on fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) glass substrates through low temperature aqueous solution growth, namely, via a pulsed electrochemical deposition and by successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) technique. It is shown that the crystal structure, surface morphology, chemical composition and optical properties obtain some destructive changes after plasma processing due to the creation of oxygen vacancies Vo and H-related defects, and additionally, because of the zinc oxide etching by the glow-discharge H₂⁺ plasma through reduction of zinc oxide and evaporation of Zn from the surface. Neverthe-less, our investigations show quite good stability of the ZnO layers to the plasma-induced radiation and chemical impacts under high total H₂⁺ fluence received by every ZnO/FTO sample ~ 8·10¹⁸ cm⁻².