Abstract
The use of a 10-nm-thick buffer layer enabled tailoring of the characteristics, such as film deposition and structural and electrical properties, of magnetron-sputtered Al-doped ZnO (AZO) films containing unintentionally retained Ar atoms. The AZO films were deposited on glass substrates coated with the buffer layer via direct-current magnetron sputtering using Ar gas, a substrate temperature of 200 °C, and sintered AZO targets with an Al2O3 content of 2.0 wt %. The use of a Ga-doped ZnO film possessing a texture with a specific well-defined orientation as the buffer layer was very effective for improving the crystallographic orientation, reducing the residual stress, and improving the carrier transport of the AZO films. The residual compressive stress and in-grain carrier mobility were responsible for the retention of Ar atoms by the films, as observed using an electron probe microanalyzer.
Highlights
Magnetron sputtering (MS) is the most commonly used deposition technique for transparent conductive oxide (TCO) films, such as Sn-doped In2O3 (indium tin oxide (ITO))
The dashed line corresponds to an orbital of a ω-fixed 2θ scan of out-of-plane GI-X-ray diffraction (XRD), which will be discussed later alongside families of planes parallel to the substrate surface, that is, a Figure 2c clearly shows the occurrence of narrow peaks corresponding to the 0002, 0004, and 0006 reflections with very high intensities for the Al-doped ZnO (AZO) film grown on the buffer layer at a substrate position of 0.5 cm
It is not necessary to consider the influence of the erosion zone of the target on the crystallographic orientation of the textured polycrystalline AZO films deposited on the buffer layer
Summary
Magnetron sputtering (MS) is the most commonly used deposition technique for transparent conductive oxide (TCO) films, such as Sn-doped In2O3 (indium tin oxide (ITO)). At the substrate position of 6.5 cm, the ratios with and without the buffer layer were considerably lower at 0.08 and 0.06, respectively These findings imply the fact that introduction of Ar atoms primarily results from backscattering perpendicular to the target in the erosion zone, while the sputtered flux is distributed angularly.[20] It should be noted that the content of residual Ar atoms in AZO films with the buffer layer was on the same level with the case of without the buffer layer, it even had columnar grains with the highly preferential c-axis orientation owing to the well-defined (0001) orientation. Future studies on other possible factors, such as Ar incorporated in the grains and residual stress including both compressive and tensile stress, are required to further build on the results of this study and our previous studies.[20,30,32−34,39,73]
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