Effects of hydrogen flux on the properties of Al-doped ZnO films sputtered in Ar + H2 ambient at low temperature

Abstract Al-doped ZnO (AZO) transparent conductive thin films were grown by magnetron sputtering with AZO (98 wt.% ZnO, 2 wt.% Al 2 O 3 ) ceramic target in Ar + H 2 ambient at a relatively low temperature of 100 °C. To investigate the dependence of crystalline and properties of as-grown AZO films on the H 2 -flux, X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoemission spectrometer (XPS), Hall and transmittance spectra measurements were employed to analyze the AZO samples deposited with different H 2 -flux. The results indicate that H 2 -flux has a considerable influence on the transparent conductive properties of AZO films. The resistivity of 4.15 × 10 −4  Ω cm and the average transmittance of more than 94% in the visible range were obtained with the optimal H 2 -flux of 1.0 sccm. Such a low temperature growing method present here may be especially useful for some low-melting point photoelectric devices and substrates.