Enhanced electrical and optical properties of room temperature deposited Aluminium doped Zinc Oxide (AZO) thin films by excimer laser annealing

High quality transparent conductive oxides (TCOs) often require a high thermal budget fabrication process. In this study, Excimer Laser Annealing (ELA) at a wavelength of 248 nm has been explored as a processing mechanism to facilitate low thermal budget fabrication of high quality aluminium doped zinc oxide (AZO) thin films. 180 nm thick AZO films were prepared by radio frequency magnetron sputtering at room temperature on fused silica substrates. The effects of the applied RF power and the sputtering pressure on the outcome of ELA at different laser energy densities and number of pulses have been investigated. AZO films deposited with no intentional heating at 180 W, and at 2 mTorr of 0.2 oxygen in argon were selected as the optimum as-deposited films in this work, with a resistivity of 1 x10-3 Ω.cm, and an average visible transmission of 85. ELA was found to result in noticeably reduced resistivity of 5x10-4 Ω.cm, and enhancing the average visible transmission to 90 when AZO is processed with 5 pulses at 125 mJ/cm2. Therefore, the combination of RF magnetron sputtering and ELA, both low thermal budget and scalable techniques, can provide a viable fabrication route of high quality AZO films for use as transparent electrodes. Keywords : Aluminum; Annealing; Budget control; Excimer lasers; Fabrication; Fused silica; Magnetron sputtering; Optical films; Optical properties; Oxide films; Sputtering; Zinc; Zinc oxide, Al-doped zinc oxide; Electrical and optical properties; Excimer laser annealing; Fused silica substrates; Radio frequency magnetron sputtering; rf-Magnetron sputtering; Transparent conductive oxide (TCOs); Transparent conductive oxides, Thin films