Obstacles to Undergraduate Research in Thin Film Semi-Conductor Characterization: The Creation of Inexpensive Hall Measurement Apparatus

The goal of my project was to grow and characterize thin semiconducting ZnO films grown on PET plastic via pulsed laser deposition (PLD) with a KrF laser. To characterize the electrical properties of these films, I had to create an automated Hall Measurement apparatus, as I did not have access to industrial equipment due to its unfeasible cost. The apparatus required a few components: I started by creating a Labview program to interface with an ArduinoMega, which operates a 16-switch relay. This relay was then connected to a nano-voltmeter, current source, and my sample film (which would be in a uniform magnetic field for some measurements). Labview would then compile the data into a .csv file, which my Python code would interpret and record measurements for the sheet resistance, bulk resistivity, semiconductor type, sheet carrier density, bulk carrier density, and hall mobility. The apparatus functions correctly, but improvements need to be made to get consistent data.