Sol-gel deposited aluminum-doped and gallium-doped zinc oxide thin-film transparent conductive electrodes with a protective coating of reduced graphene oxide

Abstract

Using a traditional sol-gel deposition technique, we successfully fabricated aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) and gallium-doped zinc oxide (GZO) thin films on glass substrates. Employing a plasma treatment method as the postannealing process, we produced thin-film transparent conductive electrodes exhibiting excellent optical and electrical properties, with transmittance greater than 90% across the entire visible spectrum and the near-infrared range, as well as good sheet resistance under 200 Ω/sq. More importantly, to improve the resilience of our fabricated thin-film samples at elevated temperatures and in humid environments, we deposited a layer of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) as protective overcoating. The stability of our composite AZO/rGO and GZO/rGO samples improved substantially compared to that of their counterparts with no rGO coating.