Structural, optical, and electrical properties of Mo-doped ZnO thin films prepared by magnetron sputtering

Highlights: • Mo-doped ZnO thin films were prepared successfully by magnetron sputtering. • The lowest electrical resistivity of the MZO thin film is about 9.2 × 10⁻⁴ Ω cm. • The mechanism of the changes of carrier mobility was studied. • The mechanism of the changes of band-gap was discussed and explained possibly. - Abstract: Molybdenum doped zinc oxide thin films have been prepared by RF magnetron sputtering. The influence of the film thickness (120–500 nm) on the structural, electrical, and optical properties of the films is investigated respectively. X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies reveal that with an increase in the film thickness, the crystallinity of the film improves. The obtained film with thickness of 500 nm exhibits the best electrical properties with the lowest resistivity of around 9.6 × 10⁻⁴ Ω cm. The mobility varied from 7.8 to 14.7 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ without reducing the achieved high carrier concentration of ∼4.5 × 10²⁰ cm⁻³. Optical band gaps extracted from transmission spectra shows irregular changes due to the Burstein–Moss shift modulated by many-body effects