High electron mobility and low carrier concentration of hydrothermally grown ZnO thin films on seeded a-plane sapphire at low temperature

Hydrothermal zinc oxide (ZnO) thick films were successfully grown on the chemical vapor deposition (CVD)-grown thick ZnO seed layers on a-plane sapphire substrates using the aqueous solution of zinc nitrate dehydrate (Zn(NO(3))(2)). The use of the CVD ZnO seed layers with the flat surfaces seems to be a key technique for obtaining thick films instead of vertically aligned nanostructures as reported in many literatures. All the hydrothermal ZnO layers showed the large grains with hexagonal end facets and were highly oriented towards the c-axis direction. Photoluminescence (PL) spectra of the hydrothermal layers were composed of the ultraviolet (UV) emission (370 to 380 nm) and the visible emission (481 to 491 nm), and the intensity ratio of the former emission (I(UV)) to the latter emission (I(VIS)) changed, depending on both the molarity of the solution and temperature. It is surprising that all the Hall mobilities for the hydrothermal ZnO layers were significantly larger than those for their corresponding CVD seed films. It was also found that, for the hydrothermal films grown at 70°C to 90°C, the molarity dependences of I(UV)/I(VIS) resembled those of mobilities, implying that the mobility in the film is affected by the structural defects. The highest mobility of 166 cm(2)/Vs was achieved on the hydrothermal film with the carrier concentration of 1.65 × 10(17) cm(−3) grown from the aqueous solution of 40 mM at 70°C. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s11671-014-0715-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.