Transparent conductive oxides deposited by magnetron sputtering: synthesis and characterization

Abstract: The thesis has dealt with transparent conducting oxide (TCO) materials, with a focus on Al:ZnO and with studies on Sn:In2O3 and ZnO. TCOs are a material group that is used for its properties of being conductive and at the same time transparent. In solar cells, a top layer of TCO is often used to allow light to transmit into the cell and then conduct the resulting current.   A set of growth parameters was chosen and optimized through a literature study and experiments. The depositied thin films were characterized by optical and electrical characterization methods. Rf-magnetron-sputtering was used as the deposition method, where the influence of O2, argon and substrate temperature were the parameters to be studied. As a part of the characterization a model for spectroscopic ellipsometry on Al:ZnO was made, enabling faster measurement of transport properties. The main parameter affecting the TCO properties was found to be oxygen flow and the optimum flow value for each material has been determined. Substrate heating did not show any significant improvement on the resistivity of Al:ZnO with a minimum value of ~5.0'10-4 Ωcm while no heating resulted in a value of ~6.0'10-4  Ωcm. These values are comparable to the state-of-the-art from the literature.   As a demonstration of application, the developed AZO and ZnO were applied to CIGS solar cells and these were compared to a reference. The newly developed AZO and ZnO was comparable to the reference but a lower mean fill factor indicates that improvements can be made.