• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.115-120
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• 2009

The 3wt.% Al-doped zinc oxide (AZO) thin films were fabricated on Coming 1737 substrates at a fixed oxygen pressure of 200 mTorr with various substrate temperatures ($100\;{\sim}\;250^{\circ}C$) by using pulsed laser deposition in order to investigate the microstructure, optical, and electrical properties of AZO thin films. All thin films were shown to be c-axis oriented, exhibiting only a (002) diffraction peak. The AZO thin film, fabricated at 200 mTorr and $250^{\circ}C$, showed the highest (002) orientation and the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the (002) diffraction peak was $0.44^{\circ}$. The optical transmittance in the visible region was higher than 85 %. The Burstein-Moss effect, which shifts to a high photon energy, was observed. The electrical property indicated that the highest carrier concentration ($3.48{\times}10^{20}cm^{-3}$) and the lowest resistivity ($1.65{\times}10^{-2}{\Omega}cm$) were obtained in the AZO thin film fabricated at 200 mTorr and $250^{\circ}C$.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.191-196
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• 2010

Aluminum doped zinc oxide (AZO) films have been prepared on Coming 7059 glass substrates by r.f. magnetron sputtering method. A powder target instead of a conventional sintered ceramic target was used in order to improve the utilization efficiency of the target and reduce the cost of the film deposition process. The influence of sputter pressure on the structural, electrical, and optical properties of AZO films were studied. The AZO films had hexagonal wurtzite structure with a preferred c-axis orientation, regardless of sputter pressure and target types. The crystallinity and degree of orientation was increased by increasing the sputter pressure. For higher sputtering pressures, a reduction of the resistivity was observed due to a increase on the mobility and the carrier concentration. The lowest resistivity of $6.5{\times}10^{-3}\;{\Omega}-cm$ and the average transmittance of 80% can be obtained for films deposited at 15 mTorr.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.28 no.10
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• pp.652-657
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• 2015

We have investigated the properties of Al-doped ZnO (AZO) thin films as functions of atomic layer deposition (ALD) oxidants. AZO transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) layer was deposited by ALD with adding trimethylaluminum (TMA) and diethylzinc (DEZn). AZO films were deposited at low temperature with $H_2O$ and $O_3$ as oxidants. Electrical, optical and structural properties of AZO thin films were investigated by 4-point probe, Hall effect measurement, UV-VIS, and AFM. Microstructure and atomic bonding states were investigated by HRXRD and XPS. The resistivity of AZO films grown using $H_2O$ was lower than the films grown using $H_2O$ and $O_3$, by approximately two orders of magnitude. The differences in oxygen vacancy peak intensity of AZO films were correlated to the optical and electrical properties.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Heat Treatment
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.13-16
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• 2017

$SnO_2$ single layer films and 2 nm thick Ni thin film intermediated $AZO/Ni/SnO_2$ trilayer films were deposited on glass substrate at room temperatures by RF and DC magnetron sputtering and then the optical and electrical properties of the films were investigated to enhance opto-electrical performance of $SnO_2$ single layer films. As deposited $SnO_2$ films show the optical transmittance of 81.8% in the visible wavelength region and a resistivity of $1.2{\times}10^{-2}{\Omega}cm$, while $AZO/Ni/SnO_2$ films show a lower resistivity of $5.8{\times}10^{-3}{\Omega}cm$ and an optical transmittance of 77.1% in this study. Since $AZO/Ni/SnO_2$ films show the higher figure of merit than that of the $SnO_2$ single layer films, it is supposed that the $AZO/Ni/SnO_2$ films can assure high opto-electrical performance for use as a transparent conducting oxide in various display applications.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.150-155
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• 2021

Zinc oxide (ZnO) based transparent conducting oxides (TCO) thin films, are used in many applications such as solar cells, flat panel displays, and LEDs due to their wide bandgap nature and excellent electrical properties. In the present work, fluorine and aluminium-doped ZnO targets are prepared and thin films are deposited on soda-lime glass substrate using a RF magnetron sputtering unit. The aluminium concentration is fixed at 2 wt%, and the fluorine concentration is adjusted between 0 to 2.0 wt% with five different concentrations, namely, Al2ZnO98(AZO), F0.5AZO97.5(FAZO1), F1AZO97(FAZO2), F1.5AZO96.5(FAZO3), and F2AZO96(FAZO4). Thin films are deposited with an RF power of 40 W and working pressure of 5 m Torr at 270 ℃. The morphological analysis performed for the thin film reveals that surface roughness decreases in FAZO1 and FAZO2 samples when doped with a small amount of fluorine. Further, optical and electrical properties measured for FAZO1 sample show average optical transmissions of over 89 % in the visible region and 82.5 % in the infrared region, followed by low resistivity and sheet resistance of 3.59 × 10-4 Ωcm and 5.52 Ω/sq, respectively. In future, these thin films with excellent optoelectronic properties can be used for thin-film solar cell and other optoelectronics applications.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2008.02a
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• pp.326-326
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• 2008

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Life Science Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.159-159
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• 2003

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.422-422
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• 2012

투명전극 산화막은 태양전지, 평판 디스플레이 등의 투명전극과 같은 광전자 소자에 사용되고 있다. 투명 전도성 산화막으로서 ITO (Indium tin oxide)는 높은 투과도, 낮은 비저항, 높은 일함수 등의 장점을 가지고 있어서 그동안 널리 사용되어 왔다. 그러나 In의 희소성으로 인한 고가격 문제 때문에 이를 대체하기 위해 불순물을 도핑한 ZnO (Zinc oxide)에 관한 연구가 활발히 진행되어 왔다. ZnO의 전기전도도를 높이기 위해 일반적으로 Al, Ga, B와 같은 3족 원소가 ZnO의 n형 도펀트로 널리 사용된다. 그 중에서 Al은 반응성이 커서 박막 증착 중에 산화되기 쉬운 반면 낮은 생산단가, 우수한 전기적 및 광학적 특성을 보이기 때문에 투명 전극으로서 Al-doped ZnO (AZO)가 많이 이용되고 있다. 본 연구에서는 rf 마그네트론 스퍼터링 공정을 이용하여 glass 기판 위에 Al-doped ZnO (AZO) 투명 전도막을 증착하였고, 수명 및 신뢰성에 영향에 미치는 주요 인자로서 온도, 온도 사이클 및 습도에 따른 AZO 박막의 열화 특성에 대한 연구를 진행하였다. 또한, 온도 사이클, 고온 및 고온고습 환경에 장시간 노출된 AZO 박막들의 성능 저하 원인들을 미세구조 관찰, 전기적 및 광학적 특성 변화들을 연계하여 규명하고자 하였다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.447-447
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• 2009

In this study, transparent and conductive Al-doped zinc oxide (AZO) films were prepared on Corning glass and silicon wafer substrate by RF magnetron sputtering method using an Al-doped ZnO target (Al: 2 wt.%) at room temperature as the thickness of 150 nm. We investigated the effects of the RF power between 100 Wand 350 W in steps of 50 W on structural, electrical and optical properties of AZO films. Also, we studied the effects of the working pressure (3, 4 and 5 mtorr) on that condition. The thickness and cross-sectional images of films were observed by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and all of the films were kept to be constant to $150\pm10$ nm on Coming glass and silicon wafer. A grain size was calculated from X-ray diffraction (XRD) on using the Scherrer' equation and their electrical properties investigated hall effect electronic transport measurement system. Moreover, we measured transmittance of AZO films by UV/VIS spectrometer.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.457-458
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• 2009

In this work, transparent conducting Al-doped zinc oxide (AZO) films were prepared on Coming glass substrate by RF magnetron sputtering using an Al-doped ZnO target (Al: 2 wt.%) at room temperature and all films were deposited with athickness of 150 nm. We investigated the effects of the post-annealing temperature and the annealing ambient on structural, electrical and optical properties of AZO films. The films were annealed at temperatures ranging from 300 to $500^{\circ}C$ in steps of $100^{\circ}C$ using rapid thermal annealing equipment in oxygen. The thickness of the film was observed by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and grain size was calculated from the XRD spectra using the Scherrer equation and their electrical properties were investigated using a hole measurement and the reflectance of AZO films was investigated by UV-VIS spectrometry.