Effect of nitrogen doping on structural and optical properties of MgxZn1-xO ternary alloys

Abstract

We deposited nitrogen doped MgZnO ternary alloys by using Pulsed Laser Deposition technique assisted Radio Frequency plasma beam (RF-PLD) of varied nitrogen/oxygen ratios. We used a Nd:YAG laser operating at 266 nm wavelength and a repetition rate of 10 Hz. The RF incident beam that was used for all deposited samples had a power and an energy density of 100 W and 3 J/cm2, respectively. The structural and optical properties of deposited colloidals were investigated by using X-ray Diffraction (XRD) and Spectroscopic Ellipsometry (SE) techniques. As Mg concentration increases, the crystalline quality of the compounds is found to decrease. Furthermore, the band gap increases from 3.37 up to 3.57 eV while increasing the nitrogen/oxygen ratio. The Mg solubility is also shown to increase by 30% in nitrogen doped Mg<inf>x</inf>Zn<inf>1-x</inf>O nanostructures. Segregation of MgO phase in Mg<inf>0.3</inf>Zn<inf>0.7</inf>O nanostructures was detected by both XRD and SE. The optical refractive index had values between 1.7 and 2 in visible spectral range, it shows high dependence on both stoichiometry and degree of crystallinity of the compounds. © 2019 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.