e investigated the effects of post-annealing in vacuum, nitrogen, and hydrogen atmospheres on the structural, electrical, and optical properties of 600 nm thick Al-doped ZnO (ZnO:Al) thin films deposited by RF magnetron sputtering at room temperature. Post-annealing in hydrogen atmosphere at 400℃ for 1 hour showed the most significant improvement in electrical properties. Resistivity decreased from 9.11×10⁻³ to 1.4×10⁻³ Ω·cm, electron mobility increased from 4.11 to 18.23 cm²/V·s, and electron carrier concentration increased from 1.63×10²⁰ to 4.85×10²⁰ cm⁻³. In contrast, post-annealing in vacuum and nitrogen atmospheres resulted in degraded electrical properties due to oxygen and nitrogen chemisorption at grain boundaries. The enhancement in hydrogen-annealed films was attributed to the formation of additional oxygen vacancies and desorption of adsorbed oxygen species from grain boundaries. All films maintained excellent optical transparency of 80-90% in the visible range. The optical bandgap exhibited a blue-shift from 3.365 eV to 3.624 eV due to the Burstein-Moss effect induced by the increased electron carrier concentration. These results confirmed that hydrogen atmosphere post-annealing is the most effective method for enhancing the electrical conductivity of ZnO:Al thin films while maintaining high optical transparency.

Nickel oxide is a nonstoichiometric transparent conductive oxide with p-type conductivity, a wide-band energy gap of 3.4~4.0 eV, and excellent chemical stability, making it a very important candidate as a material for bipolar devices.P-type conductivity in Transparent Conductive Oxides (TCO) is controlled by the oxygen vacancy concentration. During the TCO film deposition process, additional oxygen diffusing into the NiO structure causes the formation of Ni 3p ions and Ni vacancies. This eventually affects the hole concentration of the p-type oxide thin film. In this work, the surface morphology and the electrical characteristics were confirmed in accordance with the annealing atmosphere of the nickel oxide thin film.

The deposition of indium zinc oxide (IZO) thin films was carried out on substrate at room temperature by RF magnetron sputtering. The effects of substrate temperature, RF power and deposition pressure were investigated with respect to physical and optical properties of films such as deposition rate, electrical properties, structure, and transmittance. As the RF power increases, the resistivity gradually decreases, and the transmittance slightly decreases. For the variation of deposition pressure, the resistivity greatly increases, and the transmittance is decreased with increasing deposition pressure. As a result, it was demonstrated that an IZO film with the resistivity of 3.89 × 10^-4 Ω·cm, the hole mobility of 51.28 ㎠/Vs, and the light transmittance of 86.89% in the visible spectrum at room temperature can be prepared without post-deposition annealing.

In this study, functional transparent conducting layers were investigated for Si-based photoelectric applications. Double transparent conductive oxide (TCO) films were deposited on a Si substrate in the sequence of indium tin oxide (ITO) followed by aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO). First, we observed that the conductivity and transparency of AZO dominate the overall performance of the double TCO layers. Secondly, the double layered TCO film (consisting of AZO/ITO) deposited by sputtering was compared to a AZO-only film in terms of their optical and electrical properties. We prepared three different AZO films: ITO:3min/AZO:10min, ITO:5min/AZO:7min, and ITO:7min/AZO:4min. The results show that the optical properties (transmittance, absorbance, and reflection) can be controlled by the film composition. This may provide a significant pathway for the manipulation of the optical and electrical properties of photoelectric devices.

In this study, Si3N4/SnZnO/AZO/Ag/Ti/ITO multi-layer film were prepared on glass substrate by DC/RF magnetron sputtering method. To prevent interfacial reaction between Ag and ITO layer, Ti buffer layer was inserted. Optical properties and sheet resistance were studied depending on laminating times of each multi-layered film especially in visible ray. The simulation program, EMP (essentialmacleod program), was adopted and compared with experimental data to expect the experimental result. It was found out that the transmittance of the first stacked Si3N4/SnZnO/AZO/Ag/Ti/ITO multi-layer film was more than 90%. However, with increasing stacking times, the optical properties ofSi3N4/SnZnO/AZO/Ag/Ti/ITO multi-layer film get worse. Consequently, Ti layer is good for oxidation barrier, but too many uses of this layer may have an adverse effect to optical properties of TCO film.

Transparent amorphous In-Si-O (ISO)/Ag/In-Si-O (ISO) has been reported for low emissivity(low-e) applications. Effective Si doping into the In2O3 matrix led to a completely amorphous ISO film aswell as a low resistivity and a high optical transmittance. The optical and electrical performances wereexamined by measuring transmittance with a UV-VIS spectrophotometer and resistivity with a Hall effectmeasurement. Consequently, low-e glass with ISO/Ag/ISO showed a high transparency in the visibleregion and low emissivity in the infrared region, indicating that ISO is a promising amorphoustransparent electrode for low-e glass.

In this study, Sputtering method was used to grow Al-dopes ZnO films on a CIGS absorber layer, in order to examine the effect of TCO on properties of CIGS solar cell devices. Structural, electrical and optical properties were investigated by varied thickness of Al-dopes ZnO films. Also, relation to the application as a window layer in CIGS thin film solar cell were studied. It was found that the electrical and structural properties of ZnO:Al film improved with increasing its thickness. However, the optical properties degraded. Jsc of the fabricated CIGS based solar cells was significantly influenced by the variation of the ZnO:Al window layer thickness. Because ZnO:Al window layer is one of the Rs factors in CIGS solar cell. Rs has the biggest influence on efficiency characteristic. In order to obtain high efficiency of CIGS solar cell, ZnO:Al window layer should be fabricated with electrically and optically optimized.

As a method of simple patterning of transparent conductive oxide (TCO) films deposited on flexible substrates, laser direct etching was carried out on TCO films sputtered on polycarbonate (PC) substrates. As a result of different binding energies in TCO films, indium tin oxide (ITO) and indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) were more easily etched than zinc oxide with different Nd: YVO4 laser beam conditions.

By inserting a very thin metal layer of Ag between two outer oxide layers of amorphous silicon indium zinc oxide (SIZO), we fabricated a highly transparent SJZO/Ag/SIZO multilayer on a glass substrate. In order to find the optimized thickness of Ag layers, we investigated the variation of optical properties depending on Ag thickness. It was found that the transition of Ag layer from island formation to a continuous film occurred at a critical thickness. Continuity of the Ag film is very important for optical properties in SIZO/Ag/SIZO multilayer. With about 15 nm thick Ag layer, the multilayer showed a high optical transmittance of 80% at 550 nm and low emissivity in IR.

Recently, n-InZnO/p-CuO oxide diode has attracted great attention due to possible application for selector device of 3-dimensional cross-point resistive memory structures. To investigate the detailed properties of InZnO (IZO), we have deposited IZO films on the fused quartz substrate using PLD (pulsed laser deposition) method at oxygen pressure of 1∼100 mTorr and substrate temperature of RT∼600℃. The influence of oxygen pressure and substrate temperature on structural, optical and electrical of IZO films is analyzed using XRD (x-ray diffraction), SEM (scanning electron microscopy), UV-Vis spectrophotometry, spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) and hall measurements. The XRD results shows that the deposited thin films are polycrystalline over 300℃ of substrate temperature independent of oxygen pressure. The resistivity of films was increased as oxygen pressure and substrate temperature decrease. The thickness and optical constants of the deposited films measured with UV-Vis spectrophotometer were also compared with those of broken SEM and SE results.