Abstract
Zinc oxide thin films were electrodeposited from an aqueous 50 mM zinc acetate bath at room temperature on FTO coated conducting glass substrates. The effect of various complexing agents like Ethylene Diamine Tetra Acetic Acid (EDTA) and citric acid on their structural, morphological, optical and nucleation growth mechanism were studied. Zinc oxide film formation was confirmed by using Xray diffractometer. The band gap of the films deposited using different complexing agents is in the range of 3.25 to 3.3 eV. Zinc oxide thin films show different morphologies like cauliflower, granular and compact structure when depositions were carried out in absence and presence of complexing agents. According to Scharifker and Hills nucleation growth mechanism films deposited without complexing agents and those deposited with EDTA follows 3D instantaneous nucleation and growth mechanism while films in presence of citric acid arrested type of growth is observed due to influence of citric acid molecules over studied time domain. The effect of complexing agents on nuclei density (N0), saturated nuclei density (Nsat) and nucleation rate constant (A) were studied and found that the values of these kinetic parameters decrease in presence of complexing agents.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 797-808 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | International Journal of Electrochemical Science |
Volume | 2 |
Issue number | 10 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2007 |
Keywords
- Electrodeposition
- Scanning electron microscopy (SEM)
- Spectrophotometer
- X-ray diffractometer
- Zinc oxide thin films