Characterization of Al-Doped ZnO Transparent Conducting Thin Film Prepared by Off-Axis Magnetron Sputtering

Sin-Liang Ou,Feng-Min Lai,Da-Long Cheng,Kuo-Sheng Kao,Lun-Wei Yuan

doi:10.1155/2016/6250640

Abstract

The off-axis sputtering technique was used to deposit Al-doped ZnO (AZO) films on glass substrates at room temperature. For the illustration of the sample position in the sputtering chamber, the value ofR/ris introduced. Here,ris the radius of AZO target and R is the distance between the sample and the center of substrate holder. A systematic study for the effect of deposition parameters on structural, optical, and electrical properties of AZO films has been investigated in detail. As the sample position ofR/ris fixed at 1.8, it is found that the as-deposited AZO film has relatively low resistivity of 2.67 × 10−3 Ω-cm and high transmittance above 80% in the visible region. Additionally, after rapid thermal annealing (RTA) at 600°C with N2atmosphere, the resistivity of this AZO film can be further reduced to 1.19 × 10−3 Ω-cm. This indicates the AZO films prepared by off-axis magnetron sputtering and treated via the appropriate RTA process have great potential in optoelectronic applications.

Highlights

Transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) are commonly used for a wide range of applications consisting of solar cells, flat panel displays, touch panels, and lightemitting diodes
The crystal structures of Al-doped ZnO (AZO) films deposited on glass substrates were examined by XRD
By changing the sample position of R/r from 0.6 to 2.2, only the ZnO(002) diffraction peak can appear in the patterns of these AZO films, which reveals the c-axis preferred orientation growth is dominated due to the self-texturing phenomenon [15]

Summary

Introduction

Transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) are commonly used for a wide range of applications consisting of solar cells, flat panel displays, touch panels, and lightemitting diodes. ZnO-based films can be grown by many deposition techniques consisting of sputtering [7], evaporation [8], chemical vapor deposition [9], spin coating [10], sol-gel [11], spray pyrolysis [12], and so on. Among these methods, sputtering is widely employed because the deposited films usually possess plenty of advantages, such as good adhesion, high uniformity in thickness, and high film density. To reduce the effect of bombardment during the film deposition, the off-axis sputtering technique has been proposed [13, 14]

Methods

Results

Conclusion