Preparation And Research Of The Textured AZO Thin Films

In this paper, the AZO thin films were prepared by DC magnetron sputtering,following by etching in0.5%HCL to obtain textured AZO thin films, and thestructural,optical and electrical properties of films were tested by XRD, SEM, ultravioletspectrophotometer and etc. By studying the effect of textured time, substrate temperature,sputtering power, sputtering pressure and annealing temperature on AZO films, theoptimized process parameters were determined.The results showed that appropriate textured time could improve surfacemorphology and the capability of light scattering of the films.With the increase ofsubstrate temperature,the structural properties of the film became more stable,theresistivity decreased and surface morphology became smoother. But when thetemperature exceeded330℃, the properties of the film deteriorated, and the surfacemorphology was difficult to erode. When deposited at250℃,The <002> diffractionbecame strongest,and the resistivity reached to1.17×10-3cm.The resistivity of filmscould be reduced with the increase of the sputtering power,but when the sputteringpower was over60W,the C-axis preferred orientation of the film was broken with a greatdecrease in transmittance and worsening of the surface morphology with more surfacedefects.The high transmittance,low resistivity and complete corrodent surfacemorphology could be achieved at around12Pa.The properties of film may become poorat too low or high sputtering pressure.The annealing temperature could improve thecrystallization quality.When the annealing temperature was between250℃and330℃,the transmittance could reached over90%, the resistivity could decreased to0.793×10-3cm, and the pits of surface could be even, however, the quality of the filmcould be worse above330℃.Therefore, it was appropriate to set the annealingtemperature between250℃~330℃.