Abstract
As optoelectronic devices continue to improve, control over film thickness has become crucial, especially in applications that require ultra-thin films. A variety of undesired effects may arise depending on the specific growth mechanism of each material, for instance a percolation threshold thickness is present in Volmer-Webber growth of materials such as silver. In this paper, we explore the introduction of aluminum in silver films as a mechanism to grow ultrathin metallic films of high transparency and low sheet resistance, suitable for many optoelectronic applications. Furthermore, we implemented such ultra-thin metallic films in Dielectric/Metal/Dielectric (DMD) structures based on Aluminum-doped Zinc Oxide (AZO) as the dielectric with an ultra-thin silver aluminum (Ag:Al) metallic interlayer. The multilayer structures were deposited by magnetron sputtering, which offers an industrial advantage and superior reliability over thermally evaporated DMDs. Finally, we tested the optimized DMD structures as a front contact for n-type silicon solar cells by introducing a hole-selective vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) dielectric layer.
Highlights
The proliferation of photonic technologies seen in recent years has been enabled by a steadily increasing potential of the optoelectronic devices
Ultra-thin metallic layers are a very interesting alternative for their use in transparent conductive electrodes. These electrodes have been based on degenerate doped wide band gap semiconductors such as gallium-doped zinc oxide (GZO), fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) or tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) [2,3,4]
6b, which is quite remarkable for such an ultrathin film (i.e., 7.1 nm)
Summary
The proliferation of photonic technologies seen in recent years has been enabled by a steadily increasing potential of the optoelectronic devices. Opening a new fan out of applications including sensing, anti-reflection coatings or energy harvesting devices among many others. Many of these applications employ pure metal and metal-containing films Ultra-thin metallic layers are a very interesting alternative for their use in transparent conductive electrodes. These electrodes have been based on degenerate doped wide band gap semiconductors such as gallium-doped zinc oxide (GZO), fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) or tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) [2,3,4].
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