Influence of Vacuum Annealing Temperature on Structural, Optical and Electrical of Nanocolumnar AZO Films for TCO Application

Abstract

In this work, the nanocolumnar AZO thin film was deposited on glass slide and silicon wafer (100) substrate by dc pulsed magnetron sputtering with glancing angle deposition (GLAD) technique on the silicon (100) wafer and glass slide substrate. The influences of annealing treatment on the nanocolumnar AZO thin films prepared in different temperature at 200 – 400 C for 3 hours in vacuum were investigated. The physical morphologies, optical and electrical properties of the vertically aligned nanocolumnar AZO thin films were investigated using grazing incident X-ray diffraction (GIXRD), field-emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM), UV-Vis-NIR spectrophotometer with angle-dependent technique and Hall-effect measurement. The crystal structure analysis from GIXRD indicated that as-deposited and annealed nanocolumnar AZO films were crystalline with wurtzite structure. In addition, the results show that the optimum annealed temperature of 400 C was the most valuable to improve the optical transmission in visible region (86.6%) with omnidirectional anti-reflection property and low resistivity (1.70 10-3 Ω·cm) of nanocolumnar AZO films.