Homo- and hetero-epitaxial growth of hexagonal and cubic Mg_<i>x</i>Zn_1−<i>x</i>O alloy thin films by pulsed laser deposition technique

In this work, we describe the homo- and hetero-epitaxial growth of hexagonal and cubic MgxZn1−xO thin films on lattice matched substrates of c-Al2O3, ZnO, MgO and SrTiO3. The crystalline quality, composition and epitaxial nature of the alloy films are obtained by x-ray diffraction and Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS) techniques. The RBS channeling yields are in the range 3–8% for homoepitaxial and hetero-epitaxial thin films. The metal–semiconductor–metal and ultraviolet detectors were fabricated on hexagonal and cubic MgxZn1−xO thin films and the leakage current and UV-visible rejection ratio are correlated with the epitaxial relationship between the film and substrates.