Growth of nitrogen doped ZnO films through a nitrogen diffusion process from WN films formed by a cosputtering technique

High quality nitrogen doped ZnO films were fabricated on glass substrates by allowing nitrogen atoms from a pregrown tungsten nitride (WN) to be activated and diffused into a pure ZnO film during an in situ post-thermal annealing process. The N doped ZnO film exhibited reproducible electrical properties including a Hall concentration of 3.69× ^{1018 cm-3}, a mobility of 1.35 ^cm2 / _Vs, and a resistivity of 10 Ω cm at room temperature, along with corresponding structural results. Further investigation using ZnO p-n homojunctions, which displayed good I-V characteristics with a turn-on voltage of about 3 V, demonstrated that the p -type ZnO growth process can simply form p -type ZnO:N.