Epitaxial growth of highly textured ZnO thin films on Si using an AlN buffer layer by atomic layer deposition

Highly textured ZnO thin films were successfully grown on Si(111) by atomic layer deposition using an epitaxial AlN buffer layer at deposition temperatures between 100 and 300 °C. X-ray diffraction analysis proves an epitaxial relationship of ZnO[0001]//AlN[0001] and ZnO [ 11 2 ¯ 0 ] / / AlN [ 11 2 ¯ 0 ]. Omega scans of the (0002) and ( 10 1 ¯ 0 ) reflections of ZnO demonstrate an improving crystalline quality for increasing deposition temperatures. An additional thermal postannealing step at 800 °C is found to be beneficial to further improve the crystal structure.