New insights on the burstein-moss shift and band gap narrowing in indium-doped zinc oxide thin films

Abstract

The Burstein-Moss shift and band gap narrowing of sputtered indium-doped zinc oxide (IZO) thin films are investigated as a function of carrier concentrations. The optical band gap shifts below the carrier concentration of 5.61 ? 1019 cm-3 are well-described by the Burstein-Moss model. For carrier concentrations higher than 8.71 ? 1019 cm-3 the shift decreases, indicating that band gap narrowing mechanisms are increasingly significant and are competing with the Burstein-Moss effect. The incorporation of In causes the resistivity to decrease three orders of magnitude. As the mean-free path of carriers is less than the crystallite size, the resistivity is probably affected by ionized impurities as well as defect scattering mechanisms, but not grain boundary scattering. The c lattice constant as well as film stress is observed to increase in stages with increasing carrier concentration. The asymmetric XPS Zn 2p3/2 peak in the film with the highest carrier concentration of 7.02 ? 1020 cm-3suggests the presence of stacking defects in the ZnO lattice. The Raman peak at 274 cm-1 is attributed to lattice defects introduced by In dopants.