LAUSR

Abstract Zinc oxide films with a high transmittance in the visible range (over 80%) were obtained by successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction method without thermal treatment, using only a low-temperature (125 °C) ethylene glycol bath to complete the reaction. It was shown that the film deposition rate, as well as its structural and optical properties can be adjusted by variation of NH4OH concentration in the precursor solution. All obtained films were of a uniform surface morphology with fine grains about 43–48 nm in size and larger flower-like surface formations. The complex multi-technique material characterization has shown that ZnO deposited from 1:20 ZnSO4:NH4OH precursor solution featured low content of residual phases, faster growing rate, higher c-axis orientation, and the highest transparency. At the same time, optical band gap of the samples (Eg ≈ 3.4 eV) showed no marked dependence on NH4OH concentration.