Abstract
In this work, aluminum-doped zinc oxide (Al-doped ZnO, AZO) nanostructures were synthesized by the thermal evaporation in a CVD process and characterized. We have tested three different methods of utilizing the sources of the aluminum dopant, namely dispersed Al powder, sputtered Al by DC sputter, and mixed with Zn powder and aluminium chloride solution. The influence of different aluminum sources toward the growth of zinc oxide and the effect of doping aluminum was discussed. Thermally reacted temperature was at 500□C in the furnance (at 1 Torr) with gas flow of 100 sccm Ar and 5 sccm O2. The heated rate was 25°C per minute, and heated time was 20 minutes. From FESEM observation, ZnO nanostructures were found three different morphologies. The lattice constance of c-axis is 0.5 nm. Raman spectrum shows the peak of vibration modes of ZnO. Cathodoluminescence spectrum shows the strong intensity of UV emission and a green emission peak resulted from oxygen vancancies. From XPS analysis, the Al-doped ZnO nanostructures was successfully grew on the Al powder-dispersed substrates.