, Cleveland, OH, USA).

The selleck screening library topography of the ZnAl2O4 films was observed using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Results and discussion Growth temperature of the ZnO/Al2O3 composite films In order to determine the common ALD growth temperature for ZnO/Al2O3 multilayers, the dependences of the growth per cycle on the substrate temperatures were studied on pure ZnO and Al2O3 films, respectively, as shown in Figure  1. The growth per cycle of the ZnO film increases from 1.55 to 1.83 Å as the deposition temperature increases from 100°C to 150°C, and then decreases to 1.59 Å as the temperature increases to 200°C, indicating a narrow ALD growth window of ZnO around 150°C with growth rate of 1.83 Å/cycle. The thermal dependence of the growth rate of Al2O3 shows a nearly constant value at around 1.0 Å/cycle in a wide temperature window from 100°C to Tozasertib purchase 350°C. The optimized growth temperature for growth of uniform ZnO/Al2O3 multilayer should be optimized within the overlap region of the two ALD windows. Optimization should be done according to the growth temperature for high-quality ZnO films. Figure 1 Dependences of the growth per cycle of pure ZnO and Al 2 O 3 films on the growth temperatures. The crystal

quality of a semiconductor is normally evaluated by the efficiency of its band-edge photoluminescence; therefore, room temperature PL spectra of the ZnO films grown at different temperature were studied under the excitation of a 266-nm laser, as shown in Figure  2. The ultraviolet (UV) peak at around 387 nm is from the near-band-edge emission of crystalline ZnO, while the broad peak

around 600 nm can be ascribed to the radiative recombination at the defects in ZnO films. The intensity of the UV peak increases with increasing the growth temperature from 100°C to 150°C, with a maximum growth temperature at 150°C and saturation at higher growth temperature up to 200°C. In the meantime, the luminescent band at 600 nm from the defects strongly decreases from 100°C to 150°C. This indicates that Demeclocycline the crystalline quality of the ZnO film is getting better with a decrease of the defect density from 100°C to 150°C and become stable at higher growth temperatures up to 200°C. Luca et al. [16] reports an increase of the PL intensity with further increasing growth temperature from 200°C to 240°C, indicating a better crystal quality of the ZnO film at higher growth temperature. However, ZnO films cannot be Selleckchem AZD1480 deposited uniformly in ALD mode at higher temperatures above 200°C due to the thermal decomposition of DEZn precursor [17]. As a consequence, the optimized growth temperature for deposition of ZnO/Al2O3 composite films was selected at 150°C. The growth rates of the pure ZnO and Al2O3 films were 1.83 and 1.03 Å per cycle at this temperature, respectively, which are consistent with the reported values in [18].