Growth Of ZnO Thin Films By Magnetron Sputtering

As a new type of semiconductor material, ZnO can be used as transparent electrode and window materials of thin film solar cells and has great research values.This paper focused on the study of ZnO and Al-doped ZnO(AZO) thin films. The ZnO thin films were fabricated by DC magnetron sputtering method. The XRD, SEM, four-probe tester, UV-Vis spectrophotometer and other instruments were used for testing and studying the influence on the structure and optical experiments performance for AZO thin films by changing the substrate temperature, sputtering power, sputtering pressure, annealing temperature, annealing time and other parameters.With the increase of glass substrate temperature, the film's crystallinity changed for better. With a clear c-axis preferred orientation, the film's resistivity decreased and the transmittance increased in the visible region of light. The resistance decreased to 1.36×10-3Ω·cm and the average optical transmittance increased to 80% at 350℃. The increase of sputtering power could improve the quality of thin films and decrease the resistivity. But the light transmittance would reduce sharply by the sputtering power which is too high. The film's resistivity can be reduced by increasing sputtering pressure. But if the pressure is higher than 14.0Pa, the resistivity increased dramatically. Annealing treatment can improve the film's properties effectively. With the increase of annealing temperature, the resistivity decreased to a certain extent. And the annealing time of 2-3 hours is more appropriate.