Room Temperature Growth of Al-Doped ZnO Thin Films by Reactive DC Sputtering Technique with Metallic Target

We prepared Al-deopd ZnO (AZO) films by reactive DC sputtering method using metallic target at room temperature. All the tested AZO films (0<[Al]<8.9%) with the transmittance above 85% in visible region were successfully grown on quartz substrate. All the AZO films have wurtzite structure with no impurity phase. The AZO films with [Al]<2.9% have the preferential orientation in c-axis direction, and the orientation became indistinct as increasing in Al content. In the optical measurement, the absorption edge was shifted from 3.30 to 3.66 eV due to Burstein–Moss effect, and the electron densities were roughly estimated at 2.5×1019 to 1.5×1021 cm-3, respectively. On the other hand, the high transmittance in infrared region suggested low electron mobility. Since this gives rise to the high electric resistivity, the further improvements and optimization of the growth conditions are required for the realization of AZO based transparent conductive.