Effects of different annealing processes on optoelectronic and bending fatigue properties of AgZr and ITO/AgZr thin film metallic glass

Abstract Transparent conducting oxide (TCO) films are widely used throughout the optoelectronics industry. The present study explores the optoelectronic responses of AgZr (AZ) and ITO/AgZr (IAZ) thin film metallic glasses (TFMGs) with different Ag and Zr compositions and processed by two different annealing methods, namely furnace annealing (FA) and laser annealing (LA). Among the various as-deposited AZ and IAZ films, the ITO/Ag 66 Zr 34 (IA6Z) film has the highest optical transmittance (55.7%) and the lowest sheet resistance (145.8 Ω/□) For the FA samples, an annealing temperature of 300 °C results in the optimal optoelectronic properties, namely a transmittance of 68.4% and a sheet resistance of 47.2 Ω/□. For the LA samples, the optimal processing conditions (a pulse energy of 2.5 μJ and a repetition rate of 150 kHz) yield optical transmittance and sheet resistance values of 64.0% and 17.8 Ω/□ respectively. The optimal LA processing conditions increase the Haacke figure of merit of the IA6Z sample from 2.0 × 10 −5 in the as-deposited condition to 6.5 × 10 −4 Ω −1 under the annealed condition; corresponding to a 32.5-fold improvement. Finally, the relative change in resistivity (ΔR/R 0 , where R 0 is the initial resistivity, R i is the measured resistivity after a certain number of cycles, and ΔR is R i − R 0 ) of the as-deposited IA6Z sample following fatigue testing (10,000 cycles) with a bend radius of 7 mm (ΔR/R 0 =0.49) is significantly lower than that of a pure ITO film of roughly equivalent thickness (ΔR/R 0 =0.93).