Improved ITO thin films with a thin ZnO buffer layer by sputtering

In this paper, we report a buffering method of improving the quality of ITO thin films on glass by r.f. magnetron sputtering. By applying a ZnO buffer before the ITO deposition in the same run of sputtering, ITO films showed single (111)-oriented highly textured structure, while ITO films showed mixed-oriented polycrystalline structure on bare glass. A design of experiment was taken out to minimize the resistivity of ITO films in the deposition parameter space (oxygen ratio, total gas pressure, and temperature). Resistance measurements showed that the ITO films with ZnO buffers had a remarkable 50% decrease of resistivity comparing to those without ZnO buffers at optimized deposition condition. Room-temperature Hall effect measurements showed that the decrease in resistivity comes from a large increase of mobility and a slight increase of carrier density after forming gas annealing. The ZnO/glass may be a good alternative substrate to bare glass for producing high quality ITO films for advanced electro-optic applications.