Highly transparent conductive AZO/Zr50Cu50/AZO films in wide range of visible and near infrared wavelength grown by pulsed laser deposition

Novel AZO/Zr50Cu50/AZO tri-layer transparent conductive films with excellent transmittance in both visible and near infrared region were successfully prepared by pulsed laser deposition on glass substrates. The electrical and optical properties were investigated at various Zr50Cu50 thicknesses. As the AZO thickness was fixed at 50 nm and Zr50Cu50 thickness was varied between 1 and 18 nm, it was found that AZO (50 nm)/Zr50Cu50/AZO (50 nm) tri-layer films exhibited good conductivity and high transmittance in both visible and near infrared wavelength. Additionally, both the electrical and optical properties of AZO (50 nm)/Zr50Cu50 (2 nm)/AZO (50 nm) tri-layer films were found to be sensitive to the growth temperature. In this work, the lowest sheet resistance (43 X/h) and relatively high transmittance (similar to 80%) in the range of 400-2000 nm were achieved while the growth temperature was 350 degrees C. Furthermore, the AZO (50 nm)/Zr50Cu50 (2 nm)/AZO (50 nm) thin film deposited at 350 degrees C exhibits the highest figure of merit of 1.42 x 10(-3) Omega(-1), indicating that the multilayer is promising for coated glasses and thin film solar cells. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B. V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.