Room temperature deposition of alumina-doped zinc oxide on flexible substrates by direct pulsed laser recrystallization

Martin Y. Zhang, Purdue University
Qiong Nian, Purdue University
Gary J. Cheng, Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University

Date of this Version

4-9-2012

Citation

Appl. Phys. Lett. 100, 151902 (2012)

Comments

Copyright (2012) American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Appl. Phys. Lett. 100, 151902 (2012) and may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3702460. The following article has been submitted to/accepted by Applied Physics Letters. Copyright (2012) Martin Y. Zhang, Qiong Nian and Gary J. Cheng. This article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Abstract

In this study, a method combining room temperature pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and direct pulsed laser recrystallization (DPLR) is introduced to deposit transparent conductive oxide (TCO) layer on low melting point flexible substrates. Alumina-doped zinc oxide (AZO), as one of the most promising TCO candidates, has now been widely used in solar cells. However, to achieve optimal, electrical, and optical properties of AZO on low melting point, flexible substrate is challenging. DPLR technique is a scalable, economic, and fast process to remove crystal defects and generate recrystallization at room temperature. It features selective processing by only heating up the TCO thin film and preserve the underlying substrate at low temperature. In this study, AZO thin film is pre-deposited by PLD on flexible and rigid substrates. DPLR is then introduced to achieve a uniform TCO layer on these substrates, i.e., commercialized Kapton polyimide film, micron-thick Al-foil, and sold lime glass (SLG). Both finite element analysis simulation and designed experiments are carried out to demonstrate that DPLR is promising in manufacturing high quality AZO layers without any damage to the underlying flexible substrates. The hall mobility of AZO after DPLR on Kapton and SLG reached 198 cm(2)/v . s and 398 cm(2)/v . s respectively, while the carrier concentrations are reduced to 2.68 x 10(18) and 4.3 x 10(19) /cm(-2), respectively. These characteristics are exactly what an ideal TCO layer should carry: high conductivity and high transmission. The property changes are due to the reduction of defect density after DPLR. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3702460]

Discipline(s)

Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

 

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