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Effects of Post-Annealing on the Properties of ZnO:Ga Films with High Transparency (94%) and Low Sheet Resistance (29 Ω/square)

This study presents gallium-doped zinc oxide (ZnO:Ga, GZO) thin films. GZO thin films with both high transparency and low sheet resistance were prepared by RF sputtering and then post-annealed under nitrogen and hydrogen forming gas. With post-annealing at 450 °C, the proposed films with a film thic...

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Autores principales: Wang, Li-Wen, Chu, Sheng-Yuan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10573347/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37834601
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma16196463
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author Wang, Li-Wen
Chu, Sheng-Yuan
author_facet Wang, Li-Wen
Chu, Sheng-Yuan
author_sort Wang, Li-Wen
collection PubMed
description This study presents gallium-doped zinc oxide (ZnO:Ga, GZO) thin films. GZO thin films with both high transparency and low sheet resistance were prepared by RF sputtering and then post-annealed under nitrogen and hydrogen forming gas. With post-annealing at 450 °C, the proposed films with a film thickness of 100 nm showed high transparency (94%), while the sheet resistance of the films was reduced to 29 Ω/square, which was comparable with the performances of commercial indium tin oxide (ITO) samples. Post-annealing under nitrogen and hydrogen forming gas enhanced the films’ conductivity while altering the thin-film composition and crystallinity. Nitrogen gas played a role in improving the crystallinity while maintaining the oxygen vacancy of the proposed films, whereas hydrogen did not dope into the thin film, thus maintaining its transparency. Furthermore, hydrogen lowered the resistance of GZO thin films during the annealing process. Then, the detailed mechanisms were discussed. Hydrogen post-annealing helped in the removal of oxygen, therefore increasing the Ga(3+) content, which provided extra electrons to lower the resistivity of the films. After the preferable nitrogen/hydrogen forming gas treatment, our proposed films maintained high transparency and low sheet resistance, thus being highly useful for further opto-electronic applications.
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spelling pubmed-105733472023-10-14 Effects of Post-Annealing on the Properties of ZnO:Ga Films with High Transparency (94%) and Low Sheet Resistance (29 Ω/square) Wang, Li-Wen Chu, Sheng-Yuan Materials (Basel) Article This study presents gallium-doped zinc oxide (ZnO:Ga, GZO) thin films. GZO thin films with both high transparency and low sheet resistance were prepared by RF sputtering and then post-annealed under nitrogen and hydrogen forming gas. With post-annealing at 450 °C, the proposed films with a film thickness of 100 nm showed high transparency (94%), while the sheet resistance of the films was reduced to 29 Ω/square, which was comparable with the performances of commercial indium tin oxide (ITO) samples. Post-annealing under nitrogen and hydrogen forming gas enhanced the films’ conductivity while altering the thin-film composition and crystallinity. Nitrogen gas played a role in improving the crystallinity while maintaining the oxygen vacancy of the proposed films, whereas hydrogen did not dope into the thin film, thus maintaining its transparency. Furthermore, hydrogen lowered the resistance of GZO thin films during the annealing process. Then, the detailed mechanisms were discussed. Hydrogen post-annealing helped in the removal of oxygen, therefore increasing the Ga(3+) content, which provided extra electrons to lower the resistivity of the films. After the preferable nitrogen/hydrogen forming gas treatment, our proposed films maintained high transparency and low sheet resistance, thus being highly useful for further opto-electronic applications. MDPI 2023-09-28 /pmc/articles/PMC10573347/ /pubmed/37834601 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma16196463 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Wang, Li-Wen
Chu, Sheng-Yuan
Effects of Post-Annealing on the Properties of ZnO:Ga Films with High Transparency (94%) and Low Sheet Resistance (29 Ω/square)
title Effects of Post-Annealing on the Properties of ZnO:Ga Films with High Transparency (94%) and Low Sheet Resistance (29 Ω/square)
title_full Effects of Post-Annealing on the Properties of ZnO:Ga Films with High Transparency (94%) and Low Sheet Resistance (29 Ω/square)
title_fullStr Effects of Post-Annealing on the Properties of ZnO:Ga Films with High Transparency (94%) and Low Sheet Resistance (29 Ω/square)
title_full_unstemmed Effects of Post-Annealing on the Properties of ZnO:Ga Films with High Transparency (94%) and Low Sheet Resistance (29 Ω/square)
title_short Effects of Post-Annealing on the Properties of ZnO:Ga Films with High Transparency (94%) and Low Sheet Resistance (29 Ω/square)
title_sort effects of post-annealing on the properties of zno:ga films with high transparency (94%) and low sheet resistance (29 ω/square)
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10573347/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37834601
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma16196463
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