• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.75-79
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• 2017

Honeycomb-shaped Ag-grid transparent conductive electrodes (TCEs) were fabricated using two different processes, high density plasma etching and lift-off, and the optical and electrical properties were compared according to the fabrication method. For the fabrication of the Ag-grid TCEs by plasma etching, etch characteristics of the Ag thin film in $10CF_4/5Ar$ inductively coupled plasma (ICP) discharges were studied. The Ag etch rate increased as the power increased at relatively low ICP source power or rf chuck power conditions, and then decreased at higher powers due to either decrease in $Ar^+$ ion energy or $Ar^+$ ion-assisted removal of the reactive F radicals. The Ag-grid TCEs fabricated by the $10CF_4/5Ar$ ICP etching process showed better grid pattern transfer efficiency without any distortion or breakage in the grid pattern and higher optical transmittance values of average 83.3 % (pixel size $30{\mu}m/line$ width $5{\mu}m$) and 71 % (pixel size $26{\mu}m/line$ width $8{\mu}m$) in the visible range of spectrum, respectively. On the other hand, the Ag-grid TCEs fabricated by the lift-off process showed lower sheet resistance values of $2.163{\Omega}/{\square}$ (pixel size $26{\mu}m/line$ width $18{\mu}m$) and $4.932{\Omega}/{\square}$ (pixel size $30{\mu}m/line$ width $5{\mu}m$), respectively.