High-performance of laser annealed ITO/Cr-Ag/ITO multilayered thin film for transparent conducting application

Abstract

A novel laser annealing treatment was used to enhance the optoelectronics, and the morphological properties of ITO/Cr-Ag/ITO (ICAI) thin film are presented. The multilayer thin film was deposited using the RF magnetron sputtering technique and annealed using an Nd:Yag laser. The ICAI properties were characterized using X-ray diffraction, an atomic force microscope, field emission scanning electron microscope, energy dispersive X-ray, UV–visible spectroscopy, four and two-probe point probe. These techniques show the high quality of the thin film and the improvement of the properties caused by the laser annealing. The XRD shows that laser annealing improves the crystalline quality of the film. The AFM and FESEM exhibit uniform and high surface quality, where the roughness was decreased, and the grain size was enlarged. The optical transmittance was increased from 80 to 90 %, similar to the bandgap from 3.35 to 3.79 eV The electrical measurements show a significant decrease in the resistivity, and an Ohmic contact improved with laser annealing. The annealed structure has recorded a high figure of merit of 174 × 10−3 Ω−1. These results demonstrate that laser annealing treatment significantly enhances the thin film's properties. Therefore. The ICAI structure can replace the other transparent conducting material with a low annealing temperature and low energy.