Morphology and optical properties of Co doped ZnO textured thin films

Depending on the ZnO seed-layers, a new kind of cobalt doped zinc oxide (Zn_1−xCo_xO) thin films with controllable morphology were prepared by a facile solvothermal method. A series of ZnO thin films with different Co contents were applied to study the effect of doped Co on morphology, structural and optical properties. It is found that the doped content plays an important role on morphology evolution of Zn_1−xCo_xO films. The results of scanning electron microscope (SEM) indicate that the Zn_1−xCo_xO films are highly uniform and porous. Co has been successfully doped into the ZnO lattice structure and revealed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and energy dispersive spectrum (EDS). It can be found that Zn_1−xCo_xO thin films possess good crystalline quality through the characterization of transmission electron microscope (TEM) and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). All of the samples show a stronger violet emission and ultraviolet absorption, and the violet emission peaks shift towards red with increasing of Co content. In addition, the magnetic result demonstrates that the prepared Co-doped ZnO thin films are room-temperature ferromagnetic materials.