Effect of Ag incorporation on the electrical and optical properties of AZO/Ag/AZO multilayer transparent conducting electrode

Abstract

Silver (Ag) incorporated aluminium doped zinc oxide (AZO) based multilayer films were fabricated for transparent conducting electrode applications. AZO and Ag thin film layers were deposited using direct current magnetron sputtering system without breaking the vacuum. By carefully optimizing the thickness of the metal layer, the minimum sheet resistance of 6 Ω/square was achieved with 70% of transmission in the visible wavelength region. The surface morphology of the film was studied with atomic force microscope mapping in 5 µm × 5 µm area of the multilayer structure. The significance of the Ag layer thickness in determining the electrical and optical properties of the multilayer film was investigated.