The characterization of Cr secondary oxide phases in ZnO films studied by X-ray spectroscopy and photoemission spectroscopy

X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES), X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES), and X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) were used to characterize the Cr secondary oxide phases in ZnO films that had been prepared using a co-sputtering method. Analysis of the Cr L_3,2-edge XANES spectra reveals that the intensity of white-line features decreases subtly as the sputtering power increases, indicating that the occupation of Cr 3d orbitals increases with Cr concentration in (Zn, Cr)O films. The O K-edge spectra show that the intensity of XANES features of (Zn, Cr)O films is lower than those of ZnO film, suggesting enhanced occupation of O 2p-derived states through O 2p-Cr 3d hybridization. The XES and XPS spectra indicate that the line shapes in the valence band of (Zn, Cr)O films are quite different from those of ZnO and that the Cr₂O₃ phase dominates the spinel structure of (Zn, Cr)O films increasingly as the Cr sputtering power is increased. Over all results suggest that the non-ferromagnetic behavior of (Zn, Cr)O films can be attributed to the dominant presence of Cr₂O₃, whereas the bulk comprise phase segregations of Cr₂O₃ and/or ZnCr₂O₄, which results them the most stable TM-doped ZnO material against etching.