Nanostructure Thin Film on Glass with Highest c-axis Orientation

The sol-gel process has the unique advantage of allowing the preparation of the same composition, such as silica, in markedly different physical forms, fibers, coatings, monoliths, just by varying a few experimental conditions. Sol-gel chemistry has recently evolved into a general and powerful approach for preparing inorganic materials [1]. ZnO thin films are one of the most important materials due to technological applications. These wide variety of applications are including photoluminescence and transparent semiconductor [2], photocatalyst, piezoelectricity [3], gas sensors [4], UV light emitting devices [5, 6], varistors and Optical devices [7]. ZnO thin films have been prepared by various techniques, such as physical vapor deposition [8], chemical vapor deposition (CVD) [9], spray pyrolysis, sputtering [10], pulsed laser deposition (PLD) [11] and sol-gel method [12]. Some of the most important advantages of sol-gel processing,including conventional thin film deposition techniques, are the ease of chemical composition control, low temperature annealing and homogeneous of sol solution. These advantages make sol-gel process as a very attractive methods especially for preparation of ZnO thin films. In continuation of our efforts for preparation and characterization of thin films [13], in this study, ZnO thin film is deposited on glass substrate using sol-gel process. 2. ExPERIMENTA