Study On The Preparation And Properties Of Transparent Conductive ZAO Thin Films

The ZAO thin film has attracted much attention as its excellent optical and electrical properties. Compared with the ITO film, the ZAO thin film has many advantages of abundance in natural resources, easy production procedure, low cost, no toxicity, high thermal stability and chemical stability. Therefore, the ZAO thin film will become the new delegate of the Transparent Conduction Oxide Films. At the present time, the key factor which the ZAO thin film has not been become commercialization production is that the preparation technology was not passed a test, such as the reproducibility and the reliability of the technological parameters were baddish, the same was the uniformity of the film. People have not discovered the optimum parameter. The mass production of the ZAO thin film have great application value and economic benefit by the study of the preparation and the technology parameter, the analysis of the relationship between the structure, optical and electrical properties and the technology parameters.In this paper, the ZAO thin film was prepared in the TXZ600 sputtering apparatus by the method of direct current reactive magnetron sputtering technology. The structure, optical and electrical properties of the ZAO thin film was analyzed by XRD, SEM, ultraviolet and infrared photometer, van de Pauw method. The results indicate that the ZAO thin film has a polycrystalline hexagonal wurtzite structure, and the (002) peak is preferred orientation. The ZAO film is composed of many pellet crystallites, the grain boundary is clear.The influence of processing parameters on the properties of the ZAO thin film was discussed in detail from a lot of experiment date. The optimum parameter was generalized, which are that the partial pressure of oxygen is 0 .08Pa; the partial pressure of argon is 0 .3Pa; current field intensity is 84sccm/Pa; the substrate temperature is room temperature; the sputtering power is 120W; the deposition time is 25min; the target-substrate(TSD) is 7cm; the ZAO thin film is annealed in argon about an hour, the annealing temperature is 3000C. The ZAO thin film was prepared by using the optimum parameter, the film thickness is 500nm; the carrier concentration is 1020cm-3, the Hall mobility is10~30 cm2v-1s-1, and the resistivity is 6.4×10-4??cm; the transmissivity in visible region is about 88%. The optical and electrical properties are satisfied.