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Study of Amorphous ZnO:Al Thin Films by Low-Temperature Sputtering Technique

Aluminum doped zinc oxide AZO has been studied for 20 years. It can improve thin films¡¦ thermal stability and transparency in visible range .However AZO is not as good as ITO in conductivity and transparency, that¡¦s why the application of AZO is only limited in few fields. This is because the nature limit of ZnO. Because part of doped Al forms Al2O3 instead of sits on Zn sites, that enhances light and carriers scattering and suppresses the optical transparency and electric conductivity. This study is plane to take advantage of amorphous properties, that may be achieved try grown films at liquid Nitrogen temperature, in which the distribution of Al and Zn will be very uniform and the solubility of Al will be high. ZnO:Al thin films is grown on glass substrates at low temperature by Radio frequency magnetron sputtering system. Low-temperature deposition is done in order to deposit amorphous thin films (ceramic targets ZnO contained 2wt.% Al2O3). The Al3+ in place of Zn2+ should be uniformly distributed in the thin films because of amorphous structure. It expects to find the best deposition condition under a fixed target-to-substrate distance (10cm) by varying growth, such as the deposition mode, PF plasma power and working pressure. AFM, XRD (grazing incident x-ray diffraction) and N&K analyzer were used to measure the thin surface morphology, structure, thickness and transmittance, respectively. The colors of the thin films are very different dependent on the modes of deposition. The low sputtering rate by lower RF power and high working pressure is the key to successfully grow amorphous ZnO:Al films.
The amorphous ZnO:Al thin films (a-5) are deposited under 100W of RF power and 50mTorr of working pressure. The transmittance of the assembly of ZnO:Al thin films/glass substrate is the same as glass substrates which inducates the transmittance of films is far above 90%. However, the amorphous ZnO:Al thin films are poor conductor . We also tried to improve it by the post-annealing of ZnO:Al thin films in 2% hydrogen atmosphere. It is found to be not successful.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0904109-184619
Date04 September 2009
CreatorsYang, Meng-Syuan
ContributorsYing-Chung Chen, Hsiung Chou, Shin-Jye Sun
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0904109-184619
Rightswithheld, Copyright information available at source archive

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