Zinc oxide (ZnO) is a well-known semiconductor with a wide bandgap. This research paper describes the fabrication and characterisation of nitrogen-doped ZnO onto an ITO glass substrate. In this report is shown that the crystalline structure of the ZnO changes if nitrogen is introduced into the vacuum chamber during the RF magnetron sputtering process. The effect of depositing the ZnO under a temperature of 400 degrees Celsius has also been researched. Although these results might not be as credible as the non-heated results, due to contamination. This contamination was caused by the overheating of the Kapton tape.

The deposited thin films were characterised using UV-vis spectroscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDX), X-ray diffraction spectroscopy (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The amount of nitrogen that was doped inside the material was checked with the EDX (see tables 1 and 2). The result was that there was barely any nitrogen-infused inside the material. Although this was one of the goals of the research another result came forth which was interesting, namely the non-heated samples that were doped with nitrogen had a more obvious polycrystalline structure than the none doped sample. This was checked by using the XRD (see Figures 1 and 2), because with this test only crystalline structures can be seen. The heated samples had a lot of peaks that are not accounted for in the FTIR results (see figure 3). These peaks are most likely caused by the polyamide and silicon adhesion in the Kapton tape. The use of Kapton tape during the sputtering of the heated samples caused so much contamination that no real valid data could be retrieved from those experiments.

This research shows that doping the ZnO with nitrogen might have a positive effect on the crystalline structure of the ZnO. The results are only valid for the non-heated samples because the heated samples were contaminated by the Kapton tape.

Acknowledgements: This research was supported by the University of South-Eastern Norway Vestfold. Our special thanks goes out to Kaiying Wang, Chaoqun Cheng and Kim Robert Gustavsen.