Production of ZnO thin films used in solar cell with a sol-gel homemade dip coater technique and investigated of their structural, morphological and optical properties

Abstract

We designed a homemade dip coater controlled by an Arduino microcontroller to produce semiconductor metal oxide films such as ZnO, CoO, and NiO. The developed device was successfully used to deposit ZnO film on a glass substrate. The structural, surface, and optical properties of the film were investigated. XRD patterns showed that the film is predominantly a hexagonal wurtzite crystalline structure. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images showed that the ZnO film was uniformly and homogeneously coated on the glass substrate. EDX analysis confirmed the presence of Zn and O in the film structure. Optical characterization by UV-visible spectrometry showed that the ZnO film has a high transmittance of over 85% in the visible region and absorbs wavelengths in the range of 300–400 nm. Moreover, the band gap of the ZnO film calculated by the Tauc equation was determined as 3.398 eV.

Keywords

• dip coating;
• metal-oxide semiconductors;
• sol-gel;
• zno;
• band gap