ZnO thin films were produced by argon plasma assisted electron beam vacuum evaporation and d.c. magnetron sputtering deposition techniques. ZnO films are used in solar cells as transparent contact in heterojunction cells, and can be deposited on a variety of substrates by different techniques, including electron beam deposition and sputtering and laser ablation. ZnO thin films were prepared for photovoltaic applications and the structural properties were studied. The results showed that the sputtering and the vacuum evaporation techniques resulted, respectively, in a textured ZnO and ZnO plus Zn mixed phases. The annealing of the vacuum evaporation ZnO films resulted in films with high crystallinity.
