Experimental and First Principles Study of Structural, Electronic and Optical Properties of Zn0.875Mn0.125O Thin Film

Zn0.875Mn0.125O thin films are fabricated by a simple sol-gel spin-coating technique on glass substrates using zinc acetate dehydrate [Zn(CH3COO)2·2H2O] and manganese acetate tetrahydrate [Mn(CH3COO)24H2O]as a starting material and doping source. Isopropanol and monoethanolamine (MEA) were used as solvent and stabilizer, respectively. X-ray diffraction, ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy and photoluminescence spectroscopy are employed to investigate the effect of Mn doping on the structural, electronic and optical properties of ZnO thin films. The obtained results are compared with those using first-principles calculation based on density functional theory (DFT) with local density approximation (LDA) plus Hubbard U (DFT–LDA+U) method. This latter represents the theoretical framework to deal with strongly correlated materials to predicted successfully the electronic properties of such materials.