Herein we studied the electrical and optical properties of indium tin oxide ITO/Ag/ITO multilayer thin films for application in transparent conducting electrodes. The ITO and Ag thin films were deposited onto soda lime glass (SLG) using radiofrequency and DC-sputtering methods, respectively. The as-synthesized ITO/Ag/ITO multilayer thin films were analyzed using 4-point probe, UV-Visible spectroscopy, and Hall measurement. We observed a rapid increase in electron concentration with increasing Ag thickness. However, electron mobility decreased with increasing Ag thickness. Finally, ITO/Ag/ITO multilayer thin films showed a characteristic low sheet resistance of 18 Ω/sq and high optical transmittance value (80%) with variation of Ag thickness (5~10 nm).
Zinc tin oxide transparent thin film transistors (ZTO TTFTs) were fabricated by using n`` Si wafers as gate electrodes. Indium (In), aluminum (Al), indium tin oxide (ITO), silver (Ag), and gold (Au) were employed for source and drain electrodes, and the mobility and the threshold voltage of ZTO TTFTs were observed as a function of electrode. The ZTO TTFTs adopting In as electrodes showed the highest mobility and the lowest threshold voltage. It was shown that Ag and Au are not suitable for the electrodes of ZTO TTFTs. As the results of this study, it is considered that the interface properties of electrode/ZTO are more influential in the properties of ZTO TTFTs than the conductivity of electrode.
In this paper a printing process for patterning electrodes on large area substrate was developed by combining screen printing with reverse off-set printing. Ag ink was uniformly coated by screen printing. And then etching resist (ER) was patterned in the Ag film by reverse off-set printing, and then the non-desired Ag film was etched off by etchant. Finally, the ER was stripped-off to obtain the final Ag patterns. We extracted the suitable conditions of reverse Using the process we successfully fabricated gate electrodes and scan bus lines of OTFT-backplane used for e-paper, in which the diagonal size was 6 inch, the resolution 320x240, the minimum line width 30 um, and sheet resistance 1 Ω/□.