Download PDF
CC BY 4.0 · Organic Materials 2023; 5(01): 59-65
DOI: 10.1055/s-0042-1757982
Organic Thin Films: From Vapor Deposition to Functional Applications
Original Article

Multilayer and Thin Transparent Conducting Oxide Fabrication Using RF Magnetron Sputtering on Flexible Substrates

Sanjay Kumar Swami 
#   Equal contributions.
a   CSIR-National Physical Laboratory, Dr. K. S. Krishnan Marg, New Delhi 110012, India
,
Bidyut Barman
#   Equal contributions.
b   Photovoltaic Lab, Department of Energy Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016, India
,
Anuj Kumar 
c   Department of Physics, J. C. Bose University of Science and Technology, YMCA, Faridabad, Haryana 21006, India
,
Viresh Dutta 
b   Photovoltaic Lab, Department of Energy Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016, India
› Author Affiliations
› Further Information
   Permissions and Reprints All articles of this category


Abstract

In this work, the fabrication of multilayered transparent conductive oxides (TCOs), ZnO–Ag–ZnO (Z-TCO) and AZO–Ag–AZO (AZ-TCO), on flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate using radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering is reported, with the optical and electrical properties comparable to those of the commercially available Sn-doped indium oxide (ITO) on the PET substrate. The growth of Z-TCO and AZ-TCO layers on PET (with surface roughness ~5 – 7 nm) shows similar surface characteristics to that on the glass substrate. The multilayered Z-TCO and AZ-TCO (total thickness ~70 nm) with 10 nm of Ag thickness (named Z-2 and AZ-2, respectively) exhibit a maximum transparency of 82.7% and 86.4%, at 515 and 498 nm, respectively. The AZ-2 layer has a lower electrical resistivity of 3.92 × 10−5 Ω cm with a lower sheet resistance of 5.6 Ω/sq, whereas for ITO on PET these values are 2.62 × 10−4 Ω cm and 14.5 Ω/sq, respectively. The AZ-2 layer also gives an excellent figure of merit (FoM) of 21.3 × 10−3 Ω−1, which is better than the FoM for ITO PET (17.3 × 10−3 Ω−1). Therefore, the flexible multilayer TCOs prepared using RF magnetron sputtering on PET substrates on a large area can have better optoelectronic properties than commercial flexible ITO coating and can be used in flexible optoelectronic devices.

Key words

flexible substrates - multilayered TCO - magnetron sputtering - electrical resistivity - figure of merit

Supporting Information



Publication History

Received: 02 September 2022

Accepted after revision: 19 December 2022

Article published online:
27 January 2023

© 2023. The authors. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, permitting unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction so long as the original work is properly cited. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Georg Thieme Verlag KG
Rüdigerstraße 14, 70469 Stuttgart, Germany