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Nanocoral ZnO structures are fabricated by means of reactive magnetron sputtering with post deposition annealing. The films are polycrystalline with highly developed surfaces. Their application for biosensing is presented in the extended-gate FET approach where a nanocoral gate electrode is used to sense the pH of the solution and then the presence of BSA molecules.

Zinc oxide layers deposited on quartz substrates by means of RF reactive magnetron sputtering with subsequent RTP annealing in a nitrogen flow at 400°C and in an oxygen flow at 500°C have been investigated in applications to waveguide structures. The ZnO films reveal a highly c-oriented columnar structure with a surface roughness of 4.3 nm. Annealing causes a significant increase of the lattice constant to the value of 5.210±0.001 Å suggesting the relaxation of the stress in the film. The annealing process causes a significant improvement of propagation properties of the fabricated waveguide structures in comparison to structures using as-deposited ZnO films. The minimal attenuation coefficient of the 630 nm thick films was found to be 2.8 and 3.0 dB/cm for TE0 and TM0 modes respectively.