Abstract
Various technologies for manufacturing flat panel displays are currently being pursued world-wide. These include active matrix LCD, passive matrix LCD, and LED technologies, as well as several field emission approaches. To facilitate the development of a viable flat panel display, low voltage, conductive phosphors which emit blue, red, and green light will be required for the field emission technology. This thesis examines zinc oxide (ZnO) based thin ( ) phosphors for such an application. ZnO is a 11-VI wide bandgap semiconductor which exhibits green luminescence and has been shown to produce red luminescence as well. However, no blue light emission from ZnO thin film phosphors has been reported. An experimental survey has been conducted in which metal dopants were introduced in ZnO. This survey has revealed tungsten doped ZnO to be a previously unreported brilliant blue phosphor with high resistivity. Additional experiments indicated aluminum could be introduced in conjunction with the tungsten to increase the conductivity of the new blue ZnO phosphors. ZnO doped samples with varying amounts of tungsten and aluminum were subsequently prepared and tested. Optimization of the annealing conditions was then studied. The survey results are contained herein. Finally, it should be noted these phosphors have produced light when used as the anode material in vacuum field emission diodes.
Evatt, Steven R. (1994). Investigation of zinc oxide doped with metal impurities for use as thin film conductive phosphors. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /ETD -TAMU -1994 -THESIS -E92.