Non equilibrium thermal processing of highly implanted ZnO:Yb

ZnO epitaxial layers deposited by Atomic Layer Deposition were implanted with Yb ions to a fluence of 1x1016 at./cm2 at energy of 150 keV. Different types of annealing (in oxygen or ambient atmosphere) of ZnO:Yb samples have been performed: millisecond range flash lamp annealing (FLA), rapid thermal annealing (RTA) up to 30 min. and tube furnace annealing (TFA) up to 1 h at 800oC. It was found that the optical properties of ZnO:Yb films are strongly affected by the annealing time. According to Rutherford Backscattering and channeling (RBS/c) the annealing of implanted films leads to a partial recovery of the crystal lattice. The photoluminescence (PL) spectra in combination with RBS/c reveal that the worse reconstruction of lattice and reduction of the fraction of substitutional Yb ions results in more intense emission around 0.98 µm in case of RTA and TFA annealing. Surprisingly, the FLA annealing has shown very good result in terms of PL intensity at RT as a thermal quenching effect is much weaker in this case. The RBS/c and PL results lead to a conclusion that RTA and FTA annealing promotes cluster formation and outdiffusion of Yb while FLA suppresses it. Acknowledgements. The work was supported by the NCBiR (Poland) through the project PBS2/A5/34/2013 and by the EU 7th FP project REGPOT-CT-2013-316014 (EAgLE). It was also co-financed by Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) in the frame of the program Access to Infrastructure (15100222-ST).