a) If just the ZnO layer is getting peeled away, and the gold coating is in tact, then there is an adhesion problem between gold and ZnO.

Normally if there is a lot of stress in the deposited ZnO film, it will peel away, and this depends upon the deposition parameters during ALD. Try to vary your deposition conditions, and see that you deposit ZnO under with low residual stress.

b) If the gold layer is also getting peeled away alonwith ZnO, then we have an adhesion problem between Gold-substrate interface. You need to deposit good adherrent Cr-Au coating on your glass/quartz substrate.

b) In case of sputtered films, ZnO films deposited under very low Ar+O2 sputtering pressures, the ZnO films peel away because of high intrinsic stress, and when we deposit the same ZnO at very high pressures, it sticks very well, and ZnO films have very low stress.

c) So I would advise you to check under which conditions in ALd you are able to deposit your ZnO film in stress free condition.

K. Sreenivas

What is deposition temperature? Do you use thermal or plasma ALD?

I recomend you to increase the deposition temperature if you are using thermal ALD. More, If have plasma option, use it. You should get better result

Thank you every one for your expert suggestions.

It seems like if a layer (3-5nm) Al2O3 is deposited on top of gold than we can easily deposit ZnO on Au.

However, direct deposition of ZnO on Au layer seems to have some issue.

It seems like the DEZ precursor reacts with gold and so the deposition is very rough(unusable).

Thanks agian.

Viter, Roman, Z. Balevicius, A. Abou Chaaya, I. Baleviciute, S. Tumenas, L. Mikoliunaite, A. Ramanavicius et al. "The influence of localized plasmons on the optical properties of Au/ZnO nanostructures." Journal of Materials Chemistry C 3, no. 26 (2015): 6815-6821.