Effect of Fe doped on structural, morphological and optical
properties of ZnO film deposited by sol gel
Seval Aksoy*, Mujdat Caglar, Saliha Ilican and Yasemin Caglar
Physics Department, Anadolu University, Eskişehir, Turkey
*Corresponding author: sevala@anadolu.edu.tr
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ZnO-based structures have gained substantial research interest owing to its abundance, wide
band gap, excellent chemical and thermal stability, large exciton binding energy, large electron
mass which is expected to exhibit a strong magnetic interaction between mobile carriers and
localized magnetic ions and the thermal energy at room temperature (26 meV). Recent studies
are carried out by doping of different transition metal ions such as V3+, Fe3+ Mn2+, Co2+ and
Ni2+, into the ZnO lattice to tailor the material for various optical and electro-magnetic
properties. So far, Fe doped ZnO films have been prepared by many techniques such as pulsed
laser deposition, electron beam evaporation, magnetron sputtering, metal-organic chemical
vapor deposition, molecular beam epitaxy, sol–gel method, etc. The sol–gel method has
advantages such as low cost, easy to handle, safe, and the non-vacuum method, to prepare ZnO
materials. It is easy to realize the dopants incorporation using a one-route process simply by
modulating the ingredient of the precursors.
In this work, we prepared undoped and Fe-doped ZnO films by sol gel method using spin
coating technique on borofloat glass substrates. the effect of Fe-doping concentration on the
structural, morphological and optical properties of ZnO films were investigated. The
crystallinity and the preferred orientation of the undoped and Fe doped ZnO films were
analyzed by the XRD method. XRD spectrum of the films is given in Fig 1. The diffuse
reflectance spectra of the samples were performed using a spectrophotometer using integrating
sphere attachments. The diffused reflectance was used to determine the optical constants
(refractive index, extinction coefficient, optical dielectric constants) of the films. The optical
band gap values of these films were determined.
Intensity (arb. units)
5% Fe doped ZnO
3% Fe doped ZnO
1% Fe doped ZnO
0.3% Fe doped ZnO
undoped ZnO
30
40
50
60

Fig 1: XRD spectrum of ZnO samples with different Fe doping ratios.
Acknowledgement: This work was supported by Anadolu University Commission of
Scientific Research Project under Grant No. 1404F211