Pulsed Laser Deposition of Transparent Conductive Oxides on UV-NIL Patterned Substrates for Optoelectronic Applications

Abstract

Transparent conductive oxide (TCO) electrodes are key components in the fabrication of optoelectronic devices such as organic photovoltaic cells (OPVs) or organic emitting devices (OLEDs). Pulsed laser deposition (PLD) results in TCO coatings with adequate optical and electrical properties, the preservation of the target chemical composition in the transferred films being the major advantage of this technique. Furthermore, the performance of the optoelectronic devices can be enhanced by patterning the TCO electrodes. Indium tin oxide (ITO) remains the most popular TCO due to its high conductivity and transparency. The scarcity of the indium resources encouraged the efforts to find an alternative to ITO, a promising candidate being Al-doped ZnO (AZO). Therefore, this chapter is focused on PLD deposition of TCO films (ITO and AZO) on patterned glass substrates prepared by ultraviolet nanoimprint lithography (UV-NIL) for obtaining transparent electrodes with improved characteristics, which further can be integrated in optoelectronic applications.