Photoelectric property enhancement of Ag/FTO thin films by fabricating antireflection grating structures using ultrasonic-vibration-assisted laser irradiation

Abstract

This work focuses on the fabrication of antireflection grating structures on Ag/F-doped SnO2 (FTO) films by ultrasonic-vibration-assisted laser irradiation to compensate the optical transmittance loss due to coating the Ag layers. The effects of laser fluence and ultrasonic vibration on formation of laser-induced grating structures are investigated. The results indicate that ultrasonic-vibration-assisted laser irradiation can not only contribute to generating a complete and uniform periodic grating structure, it can also bring about a laser annealing effect to the film. Ultrasonic vibration is considered to play an important role in generating the grating structure by changing the defocusing amount of the film surface, inputting energy and providing mechanical vibration. Moreover, under the favorable influence of ultrasonic vibration, the laser parameter values can be lowered, and the interference of the laser-excited surface plasmons (SPs) with the incident laser can be facilitated. In this present work, the optimal grating-structured Ag/FTO film has the highest figure of merit of 3.26 × 10−2 Ω−1, showing significant increases compared to the untreated FTO (1.13 × 10−2 Ω−1) and the ultrasonic-vibration-free laser-irradiated Ag/FTO (2.34 × 10−2 Ω−1) films. This work may be of important enlightening and reference significance for preparing high-performance transparent conductive films.