The TiO2/ZnS/Ag/ZnS/TiO2 multilayered structure for the transparent electrodes in plasma display panel was designed by essential macleod program (EMP) and the multilayered film was deposited on a glass substrate by direct-current (DC)/radio-frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering system. During film deposition process, the Ag layer in TiO2/Ag/TiO2 structure became oxidized and the filter characteristic was degraded easily. In this study, ZnS layer was adopted as a diffusion blocking layer between TiO2 and Ag to prevent the oxidation of Ag layer efficiently in TiO2/ZnS/Ag/ZnS/TiO2 structure. Based on the AES depth profiling analysis, the Ag layer was effectively protected by the ZnS layer as compared with the TiO2/Ag/TiO2 multilayered films without ZnS as an antioxidant layer. The 3 times stacked TiO2/ZnS/Ag/ZnS/TiO2 films have low sheet resistance of 1.22 Ω/□ and luminous transmittance was as high as 62% in the visible ranges.
