Room Temperature deposition of ZnO and Al:ZnO ultrathin films on glass and PET substrates by DC sputtering Technique

TL;DR

This study demonstrates the successful fabrication of ultrathin ZnO and AZO films at room temperature on glass and PET substrates using DC sputtering, analyzing their structural and optical properties with high transparency and consistent optical constants.

Contribution

It introduces a comparative analysis of optical constants obtained via UV-vis-NIR and ellipsometry for ultrathin ZnO and AZO films, validating the measurement techniques.

Findings

High transparency of over 80% in visible spectrum.

Excellent agreement between UV and ellipsometry measurements.

Successful deposition of ultrathin films at room temperature.

Abstract

In the present work, ultrathin films of Zinc oxide (ZnO) and Aluminum doped zinc oxide (AZO) with 20 nm thick were fabricated at 300 K on glass and Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrates by means of directcurrent sputtering method. The structural morphology of the films were analyzed by (XRD) diffractometry. The average transmittance of films deposited on different substrates showed high transparency (over 80%) in the visible spectrum. The objective of the present work is to investigate the thicknesses and optical constants of ZnO and AZO ultrathin films prepared by DC sputtering onto (glass and PET) substrates using two methods (UV-vis-NIR spectrophotometer and ellipsometer (SE) by new amorphous dispersion formula) with comparison to check and confirm the results that obtained from UV with those obtained from SE measurements. The optical constants of films were extracted and compared using UV and SE techniques in the range of (200- 2200 nm) with increment of 1 nm in order to confirm the accuracy of the UV and shown an excellent agreement.