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Effect of Annealing on the Morphology, Structure and Photoelectric Properties of AZO/Pt/FTO Trilayer Films

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Acta Metallurgica Sinica (English Letters) Aims and scope

Abstract

Aluminum-doped zinc oxide/platinum/fluorine-doped tin oxide (AZO/Pt/FTO) trilayer films were prepared by sputtering 5-nm-thick Pt layers and 150-nm-thick AZO layers in sequence on commercial FTO glass. The effects of one-step annealing and layer-by-layer annealing on the morphology, structure and photoelectric properties of the AZO/Pt/FTO trilayer films were comparatively analyzed. It is found that the both annealing approaches increased the grain size and improved the crystallinity of the films, leading to enhancement in transmittance and conductivity. However, layer-by-layer annealing led to the formation of quasi-continuous or continuous AZO layers, different from the sparsely distributed AZO particles brought about by one-step annealing, resulting in excellent optical and electrical properties. Specifically, after layer-by-layer annealing at 400 °C for both Pt and AZO layers, the AZO/Pt/FTO trilayer film showed an increase in average transmittance from 71.3% to 85.3% and a decrease in sheet resistance from 7.5 to 5.6 Ω/□, leading to the highest figure of merit of 3.64 × 10−2 Ω−1.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Key Basic Research Development Program of China (No. 2011CB013000), the Jiangsu Province Research Innovation Program of College Graduate (No. CXZZ13_0663), the Senior Talent Research Foundation of Jiangsu University (No. 13JDG045) and the Open Research Fund Program of Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Center for Photon Manufacturing Science and Technology (No. GZ201307).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, 212013, China

    Li-Jing Huang, Bao-Jia Li & Ming Zhou

  2. Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Center for Photon Manufacturing Science and Technology, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, 212013, China

    Li-Jing Huang, Nai-Fei Ren, Bao-Jia Li & Ming Zhou

  3. School of Mechanical Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, 212013, China

    Nai-Fei Ren

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  1. Li-Jing Huang
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  2. Nai-Fei Ren
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  3. Bao-Jia Li
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Correspondence to Nai-Fei Ren.

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Huang, LJ., Ren, NF., Li, BJ. et al. Effect of Annealing on the Morphology, Structure and Photoelectric Properties of AZO/Pt/FTO Trilayer Films. Acta Metall. Sin. (Engl. Lett.) 28, 281–288 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40195-014-0194-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40195-014-0194-4

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