Oxide/ metal/oxide nanolaminate structures for application of transparent electrodes

Abstract

Transparent and conductive oxide/ metal/ oxide nanolaminate structures were deposited on glass and polymer substrate by RF magnetron sputtering without substrate heating. The Ag nanoparticles with different size and distance between neighboring particles were located on the interface of two thin oxide layers. This sputtering configuration allows obtaining thin films with homogeneous thickness. The three targets give the opportunity to deposit successively three different layers without opening the chamber. The developed process for transparent conducting coating is a low temperature and it is suitable for application on organic materials as substrate and foils. The experiment with different substrates manifest that the optical transparency of the conducting coating depends on substrate material. The obtained results have demonstrated that the nanolaminate structures oxide/metal/oxide (OMO) as TCO coating are especially suitable for applications in flexible electronics and optoelectronics