Comparison of the Optical Properties of Different Dielectric Materials (SnO2, ZnO, AZO, or SiAlNx) Used in Silver-Based Low-Emissivity Coatings

This work analyzed and compared the optical and photoenergetic properties of low-emissivity coatings made from various dielectric materials deposited through magnetron sputtering following a systematic, comparable method. Different multilayer structures of silver-based low-emissivity coatings were studied using SnO2, ZnO, SiAlNx, and aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO, which is inherently a semiconductor, but it fulfils an optical dielectric function in this type of structure). The properties of the coatings were determined by spectrophotometric and sheet resistance measurements. Coatings with AZO as the dielectric layers obtain the best photoenergetic performance because silver growth is more efficient on AZO. We also studied the effect of ion bombardment on AZO and SiAlNx in an attempt to obtain a better low-emissivity coating, achieving better results when etching the dielectric layer with an ion gun. Regarding the structures’ visible transmission, the oxides produced better transmission results. Based on the above, we concluded that AZO had the best optical and photoenergetic properties in our deposition system, observing, in the best-case scenario, improvements in emissivity from 0.083 with SnO2 to 0.058 with AZO and to 0.052 using an ion beam on AZO and improvements in visible transmission from 81.9% with SnO2 to 86.8% with AZO.