scholarly journals Effects of Insertion of Ag Mid-Layers on Laser Direct Ablation of Transparent Conductive ITO/Ag/ITO Multilayers: Role of Effective Absorption and Focusing of Photothermal Energy

Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (18) ◽  
pp. 5136
Author(s):  
Younggon Choi ◽  
Hong-Seok Kim ◽  
Haunmin Lee ◽  
Wonjoon Choi ◽  
Sang Jik Kwon ◽  
...  

From the viewpoint of the device performance, the fabrication and patterning of oxide–metal–oxide (OMO) multilayers (MLs) as transparent conductive oxide electrodes with a high figure of merit have been extensively investigated for diverse optoelectronic and energy device applications, although the issues of their general concerns about possible shortcomings, such as a more complicated fabrication process with increasing cost, still remain. However, the underlying mechanism by which a thin metal mid-layer affects the overall performance of prepatterned OMO ML electrodes has not been fully elucidated. In this study, indium tin oxide (ITO)/silver (Ag)/ITO MLs are fabricated using an in-line sputtering method for different Ag thicknesses on glass substrates. Subsequently, a Q-switched diode-pumped neodymium-doped yttrium vanadate (Nd:YVO4, λ = 1064 nm) laser is employed for the direct ablation of the ITO/Ag/ITO ML films to pattern ITO/Ag/ITO ML electrodes. Analysis of the laser-patterned results indicate that the ITO/Ag/ITO ML films exhibit wider ablation widths and lower ablation thresholds than ITO single layer (SL) films. However, the dependence of Ag thickness on the laser patterning results of the ITO/Ag/ITO MLs is not observed, despite the difference in their absorption coefficients. The results show that the laser direct patterning of ITO/Ag/ITO MLs is primarily affected by rapid thermal heating, melting, and vaporization of the inserted Ag mid-layer, which has considerably higher thermal conductivity and absorption coefficients than the ITO layers. Simulation reveals the importance of the Ag mid-layer in the effective absorption and focusing of photothermal energy, thereby supporting the experimental observations. The laser-patterned ITO/Ag/ITO ML electrodes indicate a comparable optical transmittance, a higher electrical current density, and a lower resistance compared with the ITO SL electrode.

2014 ◽  
Vol 997 ◽  
pp. 337-340
Author(s):  
Jian Guo Chai

Indium tin oxide (ITO) films were deposited on glass substrates by magnetron sputtering. Properties of ITO films showed a dependence on substrate temperature. With an increasing in substrate temperature, the intensity of XRD peak increased and the grain size showed an evident increasing. The results show that increasing substrate temperature remarkably improves the characteristics of the films. The sheet resistance of 10 Ω/sq and the maximum optical transmittance of 90% in the visible range with optimized conditions can be achicved. The results of experiment demonstrate that high-quality films have been achieved by this technique.


2010 ◽  
Vol 168-170 ◽  
pp. 2348-2351
Author(s):  
Lazaro De Jesus Dominguez Gallegos ◽  
Angélica Silvestre López Rodríguez ◽  
Pio Sifuentes Gallardo ◽  
Miguel Angel Hernández Rivera ◽  
María Guadalupe Garnica Romo ◽  
...  

Indium stannate (InSnO3) films doping with small amounts of copper are made highly useful as architectural window coatings. Indium-tin-oxide (ITO) has attracted intense interest due to some of its unique characteristics; it has high optical transmittance in the visible region, low electric resistivity, and chemical stability. Therefore, ITO thin films have been found to play an important role in opto-electronic applications. In this work, uniform and transparent ITO films were deposited onto glass substrates using a sol-gel process. The initial sols were prepared by mixing solutions of indium chloride prepared in anhydrous ethanol with tin chloride and mechanically stirring and refluxed 2 hours and aged 2 week, the resultant mixture until a clear and sticky coating sol was obtained. The glass substrates were spin-coated and annealed at 500 °C. Because annealing conditions affect the microstructures, the properties of the resultant ITO films can be controlled. The optical transmittance of 200 nm thick ITO film was more than 80% in the visible region. The surface morphology examined by SEM appears to be uniform over large surface areas. The structural, microstructural and optical properties of the coatings and powders made from the sols were extensively characterized by using XRD, AFM and spectrophotometer techniques


Coatings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1127
Author(s):  
Andrius Subacius ◽  
Bill Baloukas ◽  
Etienne Bousser ◽  
Steve J. Hinder ◽  
Mark A. Baker ◽  
...  

Indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films, used in many optoelectronic applications, are typically grown to a thickness of a maximum of a few hundred nanometres. In this work, the composition, microstructure and optical/electrical properties of thick ITO coatings deposited by radio frequency magnetron sputtering from a ceramic ITO target in an Ar/O2 gas mixture (total O2 flow of 1%) on unheated glass substrates are reported for the first time. In contrast to the commonly observed (200) or (400) preferential orientations in ITO thin films, the approximately 3.3 μm thick coatings display a (622) preferential orientation. The ITO coatings exhibit a purely nanocrystalline structure and show good electrical and optical properties, such as an electrical resistivity of 1.3 × 10−1 Ω·cm, optical transmittance at 550 nm of ~60% and optical band gap of 2.9 eV. The initial results presented here are expected to provide useful information for future studies on the synthesis of high-quality thick ITO coatings.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 695-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aliyu Kabiru Isiyaku ◽  
Ahmad Hadi Ali ◽  
Nafarizal Nayan

Indium tin oxide (ITO) is a widely used material for transparent conductive oxide (TCO) films due to its good optical and electrical properties. Improving the optoelectronic properties of ITO films with reduced thickness is crucial and quite challenging. ITO-based multilayer films with an aluminium–silver (Al–Ag) interlayer (ITO/Al–Ag/ITO) and a pure ITO layer (as reference) were prepared by RF and DC sputtering. The microstructural, optical and electrical properties of the ITO/Al–Ag/ITO (IAAI) films were investigated before and after annealing at 400 °C. X-ray diffraction measurements show that the insertion of the Al–Ag intermediate bilayer led to the crystallization of an Ag interlayer even at the as-deposited stage. Peaks attributed to ITO(222), Ag(111) and Al(200) were observed after annealing, indicating an enhancement in crystallinity of the multilayer films. The annealed IAAI film exhibited a remarkable improvement in optical transmittance (86.1%) with a very low sheet resistance of 2.93 Ω/sq. The carrier concentration increased more than twice when the Al–Ag layer was inserted between the ITO layers. The figure of merit of the IAAI multilayer contact has been found to be high at 76.4 × 10−3 Ω−1 compared to a pure ITO contact (69.4 × 10−3 Ω−1). These highly conductive and transparent ITO films with Al–Ag interlayer can be a promising contact for low-resistance optoelectronics devices.


2010 ◽  
Vol 24 (32) ◽  
pp. 3089-3095 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Y. HUANG ◽  
G. H. FAN ◽  
T. MEI ◽  
S. W. ZHENG ◽  
Q. L. NIU ◽  
...  

Tantalum-doped indium tin oxide ( Ta -doped ITO) transparent conductive films are deposited on glass substrates by electron-beam evaporation. The effects of different Ta concentrations and annealing temperatures on the structural, morphologic, electrical, and optical properties of Ta -doped ITO films are investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscope (AFM), Hall measurement, and optical transmission spectroscopy. The obtained films are polycrystalline with a cubic bixbyite structure of indium oxide and preferentially oriented in the (222) crystallographic direction. The minimum resistivity of 1.54×10-4 Ω ·cm is obtained from the ITO film containing 0.2 wt% tantalum annealed at 500°C and the average optical transmittance is over 95% from 425 nm to 460 nm.


1996 ◽  
Vol 426 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. J. Coutts ◽  
X. Wu ◽  
W. P. Mulligan

AbstractWe are examining various spinel-structured thin films (e.g., Cd2SnO4, Zn2SnO4) to develop higher-quality transparent conducting oxides (TCO) than more conventional materials such as indium tin oxide. Here, we report on cadmium indate (CdIn2O4, CIO), which is another member of this family. Thin films of CIO were deposited by radio-frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering, from an oxide target, onto borosilicate glass substrates. The variables included the substrate temperature, sputtering gas composition, and pressure. Film properties were measured before and after heat treatment. Characterization involved Hall effect measurements, optical and infrared spectrophotometry, X-ray diffraction, and atomic-force microscopy. Film resistivities as low as 2.3x10-4Ω cm were achieved for a film thickness of 0.55 μm. The transmittance was 90% in the visible region of the spectrum, without correction for substrate losses and without an anti-reflection coating. The plasma resonance occurred at longer wavelengths than for other materials and this, with a bandgap of approximately 3.1 eV, presents a wide window for optical transmittance. The highest mobility was 54 cm2 V-s-1 and the highest carrier concentration was 7.5x1020 cm-3.


2012 ◽  
Vol 546-547 ◽  
pp. 30-33
Author(s):  
Ming Wei Li ◽  
Nan Hai Sun

The preparation and characteristics of ZnO(Zinc oxide) co-sputtered TaO (Ta oxide) electrodes(ZTO) grown on glass substrates using a specially designed composite target for use in organic solar cells are described. It was found that both the electrical and optical properties of the ZTO films were critically dependent on the Ar/O2 flow ratio and sputtering power. In addition, all ZTO electrodes show amorphous structure regardless of the Ar/O2 flow ratio, due to the low substrate temperature. We obtained the ZTO electrode with sheet resistance of 30 Ohm/square and average optical transmittance of 80% in room temperature. The conversion power efficiency by using ZTO electrode at optimized conditions is 2.6 %.


2012 ◽  
Vol 189 ◽  
pp. 110-114
Author(s):  
Jian Guo Chai ◽  
Bo Zhang

Indium tin oxide (ITO) and indium tin zirconium oxide (ITZO) films were deposited on glass substrates at room temperature by magnetron sputtering technology with one or two targets. Electrical and optical properties of ITO and ITZO films by air-annealing treatment were contrastively studied. ITZO films provided with the preferential crystalline orientation change from (222) to (400) plane, as well as the increase in grain size and the decrease in surface roughness. As result, zirconium -doping remarkably improved the optical-electrical properties of the films deposited at room temperature. The resistivity of ITO and ITZO films showed the trend which includes first dropping and then rising, which was closely related with the variations of carrier concentration and mobility. ITZO films had high optical transmittance of above 80% at lower annealing temperature. ITZO films prepared by co-sputtering reveal better optical-electrical properties.


2014 ◽  
Vol 925 ◽  
pp. 411-415 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Hadi Ali ◽  
Ahmad Shuhaimi ◽  
Siti Khadijah Mohd Bakhori ◽  
Hassan Zainuriah

We report on electrical, optical and surface morphological characteristics of indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films. The ITO was deposited by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering on Si and glass substrates at different thicknesses of 125 nm and 239 nm. Post-annealing treatment was conducted on the samples at temperature of 500°C and 600°C. From Hall Effect measurement, the lowest resistivity was measured as 4.4 × 10-4 Ωcm and 4.5 × 10-4 Ωcm corresponding to the 239 nm and 125 nm ITO sample, respectively, after post-annealed at 600°C. Using UV-Vis spectrophotometer, the highest transmittance of ~84% at 470 nm was observed with respect to the 125 nm ITO thin films after post-annealed at 500°C. Furthermore, the 500°C post-annealed 125 nm thin film shows highest carrier concentrations of more than 1021 cm-3 and smoothest surface morphology of 0.5 nm root-mean-square, RMS. It is clearly shown that post-annealing treatment on ITO thin films is able to enhance the electrical and optical transmittance properties as compared to the as deposited films.


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