TY - JOUR
T1 - Characteristics of low-resistivity aluminum-doped zinc oxide films deposited at room temperature by off-axis radio-frequency sputtering on flexible plastic substrates
AU - Wang, Li Min
AU - Wang, Chih Yi
AU - Jheng, Ciao Ren
AU - Wu, Syu Jhan
AU - Sai, Chen Kai
AU - Lee, Ya Ju
AU - Chiang, Ching Yu
AU - Shew, Bor Yuan
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan for financial support under Grant Nos. MOST-103-2112-M-002-011 (LMW) and MOST-103-2112-M-003-008-MY3 (YJL), and the National Taiwan Normal University under Grant No. NTNU100-D-01.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
PY - 2016/8/1
Y1 - 2016/8/1
N2 - The crystalline structure, morphology, composition, electrical transport, and optical properties of aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) films are studied for applications in transparent electronics and optoelectronic devices. AZO thin films of c-axis-oriented growth and with different thickness were deposited on PET flexible plastic substrates at room temperature by rf magnetron sputtering. A larger grain size with a decreased strain ε value is observed in a thicker film, while changes in composition for films with different thicknesses are insignificant. Moreover, the resistivity of film decreases with increasing thickness, and the low-temperature electrical transport properties can be described by the scenario of quantum corrections to conductivity. With the room-temperature growth conditions, the resistivity of 4.5 × 10−4 Ω cm, carrier concentration of 6.4 × 1020 cm−3, and transmittance of 80 % for the 1100-nm-thick film are obtained. In addition, the optical bandgap energy decreases with increasing film thickness, which can be attributed to the bandgap renormalization and crystallite size effects.
AB - The crystalline structure, morphology, composition, electrical transport, and optical properties of aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) films are studied for applications in transparent electronics and optoelectronic devices. AZO thin films of c-axis-oriented growth and with different thickness were deposited on PET flexible plastic substrates at room temperature by rf magnetron sputtering. A larger grain size with a decreased strain ε value is observed in a thicker film, while changes in composition for films with different thicknesses are insignificant. Moreover, the resistivity of film decreases with increasing thickness, and the low-temperature electrical transport properties can be described by the scenario of quantum corrections to conductivity. With the room-temperature growth conditions, the resistivity of 4.5 × 10−4 Ω cm, carrier concentration of 6.4 × 1020 cm−3, and transmittance of 80 % for the 1100-nm-thick film are obtained. In addition, the optical bandgap energy decreases with increasing film thickness, which can be attributed to the bandgap renormalization and crystallite size effects.
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U2 - 10.1007/s00339-016-0250-1
DO - 10.1007/s00339-016-0250-1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84978399535
SN - 0947-8396
VL - 122
JO - Applied Physics A: Materials Science and Processing
JF - Applied Physics A: Materials Science and Processing
IS - 8
M1 - 731
ER -