The thickness of transparent conductive oxide (TCO) layer significantly affects not only the optical and electrical properties, but also its mechanical durability. To evaluate these influences on the molybdenum-doped zinc oxide layer deposited on a flexible polyethersulfone (PES) substrate by using a dual-ion-beam sputtering system, films with various thicknesses were prepared at a same condition and their optical and electrical performances have been compared. The results show that all the deposited films present a crystalline wurtzite structure, but the preferred orientation changes from (002) to (100) with increasing the film thickness. Thicker layer contains a relative higher carrier concentration, but the consequently accumulated higher internal stress might crack the film and retard the carrier mobility. The competition of these two opposite trends for carrier concentration and carrier mobility results in that the electrical resistivity of molybdenum-doped zinc oxide first decreases with the thickness but suddenly rises when a critical thickness is reached.

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The transparent conductive molybdenum-doped zinc oxide (MZO) was deposited onto a flexible polyethersulfone (PES) substrate by using an ion beam sputtering system. An argon ion beam was used to sputter an MZO target at constant pressure of 0.67 Pa and substrate temperature of 130 • C with varying the oxygen flow rate from 0 to 12 sccm. The influences of additional oxygen flow on the microstructure, optical, and electrical properties of films were investigated. The obtained MZO films present a crystalline structure. With increasing the oxygen flow rate, their electrical resistivity increases, and the optical band gap decreases from 3.46 to 3.20 eV. The film deposited in the atmosphere without introducing oxygen exhibits the best optical transmittance of 82.9% at 550 nm wavelength, electrical resistivity of 8.32 × 10 −3 Ω cm, carrier concentration of 6.82 × 10 20 cm −3 , and carrier mobility of 2.45 cm 2 /Vs.

Under the simulation environment for the vacuum and heat sink in space, the changes in optical and electrical properties of transparent conductive indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films induced by radiation of protons with 100 keV were studied. The ITO thin films were deposited on JGS1 quartz substrate by a sol-gel method. The sheet resistance and transmittance spectra of the ITO thin films were measured using the four-point probe method and a spectrophotometer, respectively. The surface morphology was analyzed by AFM. The experimental results showed that the electrical and optical performances of the ITO thin films were closely related to the irradiation fluence. When the fluence exceeded a given value 2×1016 cm-2, the sheet resistance increased obviously and the optical transmittance decreased. The AFM analysis indicated that the grain size of the ITO thin films diminished. The studies about the radiation effect on ITO thin films will help to predict performance evolution of the second surface mirrors on satellites under space radiation environment.