Effects Of Hydrogen Plasma Treatment On Optoelectronic Properties Of Transparent Conductive Oxide Films

Transparent conductive materials play an important role in industrial production as conductive electrodes.Among them,transparent conductive oxide thin films have been widely used and have been the hotspots of research.The photoelectric properties directly affect the performance of electrodes and devices.Quality,in order to improve the performance of transparent conductive oxide film,high temperature annealing treatment is often required,but this will adversely affect the performance of flexible display,organic polymer photovoltaic cells,organic light emitting diodes and the like.Therefore,it is necessary to find a low-temperature treatment method for improving the performance of transparent conductive oxide.In this paper,the low-temperature treatment of hydrogen plasma is proposed to improve the performance of transparent conductive oxide.The effect of hydrogen plasma treatment on the photoelectric properties and morphology of transparent conductive oxide films prepared by RF magnetron sputtering is studied.（1）The effect of hydrogen plasma treatment on the photoelectric properties of AZO thin films was characterized.An aluminum-doped zinc oxide（AZO）film was prepared by radio frequency（RF）sputtering at room temperature,and then a hydrogen plasma was introduced into a PECVD tube furnace to generate a hydrogen plasma to post-treat the film,using different plasmas.AZO film was processed at power,temperature and time.In addition,we compared the photoelectric properties of AZO thin films annealed by vacuum high temperature and AZO thin films after hydrogen plasma treatment.The effects of hydrogen plasma treatment on the photoelectric properties of AZO thin films and commercial AZO thin films deposited at different temperatures were investigated.The experimental results show that the hydrogen plasma treatment can optimize the AZO film with poor photoelectric performance.The sheet resistance decreases sharply from 10⁵Ω/sq to 213.9Ω/sq,and the transmittance at 500nm increases from 90.5%to 96.0%,which indicates hydrogen plasma.The bulk treatment can be used as a low temperature treatment method to prepare high performance AZO thin films and apply them to related devices.（2）The effect of hydrogen plasma treatment on the surface morphology of ITO film prepared by RF magnetron sputtering was studied.The ITO films with different thicknesses were treated with hydrogen plasma of different powers.It was found that under appropriate conditions,nano-sized spheres with controlled size were formed on the surface of the ITO film,which would be beneficial to its application on plasmon resonance sensor devices.（3）The application of transparent conductive oxide films in multilayer film structures was investigated.The ultrathin phase change material Ge₂Sb₂Te₅（GST）layer was introduced into the metal-dielectric multilayer film structure,and the theoretical simulation was carried out using the AZO film as the dielectric layer and the conductive layer.A simple non-lithographic light modulation device was designed and fabricated with SiO₂（72.7 nm）/Ge₂Sb₂Te₅（6.0 nm）/SiO₂（70.2 nm）/Cu（>100.0 nm）.Its modulation depth is about 72.6%at 1410nm and the extinction ratio is about 8.8dB,which shows its practical application potential in near-infrared modulation and absorption.