Surface-interface investigations of an ultrathin pulsed laser deposited NiO/ZnO bilayer structure

We hereby report detailed structural and morphological studies for an ultrathin NiO/ZnO bilayer structure grown on sapphire (001) substrate using pulsed laser deposition technique. The combined X-ray reflectivity (XRR) and grazing incidence X-ray fluorescence (GIXRF) studies revealed formation of a low-density defective ZnO interfacial layer of thickness ~32 Å at the ZnO/sapphire interface prior to growth of main ZnO layer. Our results further indicate that the variation of electron density across the NiO/ZnO bilayer structure is smooth and we do not observe presence of any interface layer between them. X-ray diffraction measurements show that deposited ZnO layer is epitaxial in nature whereas NiO is highly oriented along (100) direction. The angle dependent X-ray absorption near edge fine structure (XANES) measurements at Ni–K edge has been utilized to determine depth-resolved oxidation state of Ni and the results have been correlated with the depth-resolved electron density of NiO layer. The method described here offers nondestructive determination of the microstructural parameters as well as depth-resolved mapping of oxidation state of a thin film-based heterojunction device. It extends several advantages over destructive methods which are abundantly reported in literature.