Abstract
Conductive Nb-doped TiO2 films (TiO2:Nb) on glass substrates formed via post annealing of as-deposited amorphous films are expected to be an alternative next-generation transparent conductive oxide (TCO). We investigated the effects of annealing with Ar plasma irradiation on TiO2:Nb films that had been grown on glass substrates by reactive sputtering. It was revealed that annealing at 300 °C with Ar plasma, in which the plasma density was as high as 6×1011 cm-3, induced a rapid decrease in resistivity to the order of 10-3 Ω cm within several minutes. Plasma-irradiation-induced oxygen defects were suggested to be responsible for the rapid decrease in resistivity rather than the activation of incorporated Nb atoms through crystallization. The film annealed with the high-density plasma for 20 min showed optical transmittance of approximately 80% for the visible wavelength region with a minimum resistivity of 1.5×10-3 Ω cm, demonstraiting the advantages of the proposed method for fabricating TiO2:Nb films as TCOs.
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