Effect of Gold catalyst thickness on Zinc Oxide thin films

ZnO thin films were deposited using thermal chemical vapor deposition (TCVD) using gold as the catalyst in a two furnaces system. Carbothermal technique is employed in this work where graphite was mixed into ZnO powder with 1:1 ratio as the precursor. Different thicknesses of gold were deposited on the substrate to study its effect to the properties of the thin films. The ZnO nanostructures were then characterized using field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), photoluminescence (PL) measurement, and current-voltage (I-V) measurement. Influence of the catalyst thicknesses on the morphology, electrical properties and photoluminescence of ZnO nanostructures is discussed.