Effect of thermal shock on ZnO/Ag/ZnO nano-multilayers: Photoelectric property degradation

Abstract

We investigated the degeneration at photoelectric properties of typical multilayer transparent conductive electrodes (TCEs) of ZnO/Ag/ZnO under thermal shock by experiments and simulation. The experimental data indicated a reduction in the visible region transparency and an increase in sheet resistance for ZnO/Ag/ZnO after undergoing thermal cyclic shock. This resulted in a significant decrease in the Haacke figure of merit (FOM) from 30.7 × 10-3 Ω−1 to 7.8 × 10-3 Ω−1. We identified oxygen diffusion into Ag at the ZnO/Ag interface using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Concurrently, density functional theory (DFT) simulations showed that interstitial oxygen creates impurity charge centers within Ag, indirectly causing the deterioration of the photoelectric properties of ZnO/Ag/ZnO. This finding highlights the challenge of maintaining optoelectronic stability in TCO/metal/TCO (OMO) thin films for practical applications and provides both experimental and theoretical support for designing highly reliable optoelectronic devices.