Highly conductive and transparent aluminum-doped zinc oxide thin films prepared by pulsed laser deposition in oxygen ambient

Abstract

Highly conducting and transparent aluminum-doped zinc oxide films were prepared on quartz and corning glass 7059 substrate by ablating the sintered ZnO target containing 2 wt % Al2O3 with a XeCl excimer laser (λ=308 nm). To grow the films, a repetition rate of 5 Hz and energy density of 1.5 J/cm2 was kept. The effect of substrate temperature from room temperature to 400 °C and oxygen pressure (0.1–5 mTorr) have been investigated by analyzing the optical and electrical properties of these films. The average transmittance was found to be in the range of 86%–92%, and a variable resistivity (ρ) 3.56×10−3–7.0×10−3 Ω cm have been obtained. The lowest resistivity was found to be 1.4×10−4 Ω cm at 300 °C in 1 mTorr of oxygen pressure. Structural changes in the films were also investigated by determining the full width at half maximum of (002) x-ray diffraction peak. These results show improvement in the crystallinity of films, which support our conductivity and transmittance data. The sharp decrease in the transmittance or sharp increase in reflectance near the plasma edge in the near-infrared range has been attributed to impurity scattering, which is Al doping in our films.

Compensation in Al-Doped ZnO by Al-Related Acceptor Complexes: Synchrotron X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy and Theory

“…Partial information on how during-growth and postgrowth conditions (such as oxygen partial pressure and ultraviolet-ozone treatment) affect AZO film quality is reported [1,13]. However, none of the previous studies offers the detailed information on the local structure of Al site in ZnO crystal.…”

“…There are several deposition techniques that have been reported to successfully produce AZO thin films. These include chemical vapor deposition [10], magnetron sputtering [11], spray pyrolysis [12], and pulsed laser deposition [13].…”

Enhanced Nonlinear Refractive Index inε-Near-Zero Materials

“…The AZO 900-nm thick thin film was deposited by pulsed laser deposition [48,49] (PVD Products Inc.) using a KrF excimer laser (Lambda Physik GmbH) operating at a wavelength of 248 nm for source material ablation (see Ref. [47] for more details).…”

Effect of Mg Doping on Structural and Optical Properties of Al-Mg Co-doped ZnO Thin Films Deposited via Sol-gel Technique

“…In most cases, the purpose of the doping is to modulate the optical and or electrical properties of ZnO thin films. Dopants such as Al, Ga, In, B, Ag, and Cl were all expected to enhance the native n type conductivity of ZnO [16][17][18][19][20][21][22] . Dopants like Cd, Mg have been shown to modify the optical properties of ZnO by changing its band gap [23] .…”