An Assessment of Sputtered Nitrogen-Doped Nickel Oxide for all-Oxide Transparent Optoelectronic Applications: The Case of Hybrid NiO:N/TiO2 Heterostructure| Chapter 8 | Recent Trends in Chemical and Material Sciences Vol.6

 Transition metal oxides are a special class of materials that have a wide range of optical, electrical, and mechanical properties. Nickel oxide (NiO) is a p-type oxide semiconductor by nature. When combined with transparency and low temperature (low-T) fabrication processes, P-NiO with controllable and repeatable physico-chemical properties can be fully exploited in a wide range of transparent and/or flexible devices for applications such as energy management (production, manipulation, storage), sensing, wearable and health-care electronics, and so on. The goal for this research is to improve the reproducibility, transparency, and low-T fabrication procedures of p-type NiO. One of the dopants utilised to change the characteristics of NiO is nitrogen. Until now, the characteristics of nitrogen-doped NiO have been inferior to those of pure NiO. We provide nitrogen-doped NiO (NiO:N) thin films with improved characteristics compared to undoped NiO in this paper. Sputtering on room-temperature substrates in plasma comprising 50 percent Ar and 50 percent (O2+N2) gases produced NiO:N films. The undoped NiO film was a single-phase cubic oxygen-rich NiO with a transmittance of less than 20%. The films grew more transparent (about 65 percent) after doping with nitrogen, had a wide direct band gap (up to 3.67 eV), and clearly revealed evidence of an indirect band gap, 2.50-2.72 eV, depending on the percent (O2-N2) in plasma. The integration of nitrogen in the structure was linked to changes in the films' attributes such as structural disorder, energy band gap, Urbach states, and resistivity. To make a diode with spin-coated, mesoporous on top of a compact TiO2 film, the best NiO:N film was used. Both I-V and Cheung's techniques revealed that the hybrid NiO:N/TiO2 heterojunction was transparent and had good output characteristics. Thermal treatment improved the diode's transparency and characteristics, which was attributed to improved NiO:N properties after annealing. All-oxide flexible optoelectronic devices can be made with transparent NiO:N sheets.

Author(s) Details:

Chrysa Aivalioti,
Department of Materials Science and Technology, University of Crete, P.O. Box 2208, 71003, Heraklion, Crete, Greece and Microelectronics Research Group, Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser, Foundation for Research and Technology (FORTH-Hellas), P.O. Box 1385, Heraklion, Greece.

Alexandros Papadakis,
Department of Physics, University of Crete, P.O. Box 2208, 71003, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.

Emmanouil Manidakis,
Department of Materials Science and Technology, University of Crete, P.O. Box 2208, 71003, Heraklion, Crete, Greece and Microelectronics Research Group, Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser, Foundation for Research and Technology (FORTH-Hellas), P.O. Box 1385, Heraklion, Greece.

Maria Kayambaki,
Microelectronics Research Group, Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser, Foundation for Research and Technology (FORTH-Hellas), P.O. Box 1385, Heraklion, Greece.

Maria Androulidaki,
Microelectronics Research Group, Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser, Foundation for Research and Technology (FORTH-Hellas), P.O. Box 1385, Heraklion, Greece.

Katerina Tsagaraki,
Microelectronics Research Group, Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser, Foundation for Research and Technology (FORTH-Hellas), P.O. Box 1385, Heraklion, Greece.

Nikolaos T. Pelekanos,
Department of Materials Science and Technology, University of Crete, P.O. Box 2208, 71003, Heraklion, Crete, Greece and Microelectronics Research Group, Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser, Foundation for Research and Technology (FORTH-Hellas), P.O. Box 1385, Heraklion, Greece.

Constantinos Stoumpos,
Department of Materials Science and Technology, University of Crete, P.O. Box 2208, 71003, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.

Mircea Modreanu,
Tyndall National Institute-University College Cork, Lee Maltings, Dyke Parade, Cork, T12 R5CP, Ireland.

Gabriel Craciun,
National Institute for Research and Development in Microtechnologies -IMT, Bucharest, Romania.

Cosmin Romanitan,
National Institute for Research and Development in Microtechnologies -IMT, Bucharest, Romania.

Elias Aperathitis,
Microelectronics Research Group, Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser, Foundation for Research and Technology (FORTH-Hellas), P.O. Box 1385, Heraklion, Greece.

Please see the link here: https://stm.bookpi.org/RTCAMS-V6/article/view/5789