A Study on Thermal Stability of Ga-doped ZnO Thin Films with a $TiO_2$ Barrier Layer

Ga-doped ZnO (GZO) was substitutes of the SnO2:F films on soda lime glass substrate in the photovoltaic devices such as CIGS, CdTe and DSSC due to good properties and low cost. However, it was reported that the electrical resistivity of GZO is unstable above $300^{\circ}C$ in air atmosphere. To improve thermal stability of GZO thin films at high temperature above $300^{\circ}C$ an $TiO_2$ thin film was deposited on the top of GZO thin films as a barrier layer by Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) method. $TiO_2$ thin films were deposited at various thicknesses from 25 nm to 100 nm. Subsequently, these films were annealed at temperature of $300^{\circ}C$, $400^{\circ}C$, $500^{\circ}C$ in air atmosphere for 20 min. The XRD measurement results showed all the films had a preferentially oriented ( 0 0 2 ) peak, and the intensity of ( 0 0 2 ) peak nearly did not change both GZO (300 nm) single layer and $TiO_2$ (50 nm)/GZO (300 nm) double layer. The resistivity of GZO (300 nm) single layer increased from $7.6{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}m$ (RT) to $7.7{\times}10^{-2}{\Omega}m$ ($500^{\circ}C$). However, in the case of the $TiO_2$ (50 nm)/GZO (300 nm) double layer, resistivity showed small change from $7.9{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}m$ (RT) to $5.2{\times}10^{-3}{\Omega}m$ ($500^{\circ}C$). Meanwhile, the average transmittance of all the films exceeded 80% in the visible spectrum, which suggests that these films will be suitable for photovoltaic devices.