Fluorine-doped ZnO transparent conducting thin films prepared by radio frequency magnetron sputtering

Abstract Fluorine-doped ZnO transparent conducting thin films were prepared by radio frequency magnetron sputtering at 150 °C on glass substrate. Thermal annealing in vacuum was used to improve the optical and electrical properties of the films. X-ray patterns indicated that (002) preferential growth was observed. The grain size of F-doped ZnO thin films calculated from the full-width at half-maximum of the (002) diffraction lines is in the range of 18–24 nm. The average transmittance in visible region is over 90% for all specimens. The specimen annealed at 400 °C has the lowest resistivity of 1.86 × 10 − 3 Ω cm, the highest mobility of 8.9 cm 2 V − 1 s − 1 , the highest carrier concentration of 3.78 × 10 20 cm − 3 , and the highest energy band gap of 3.40 eV. The resistivity of F-doped ZnO thin films increases gradually to 4.58 × 10 − 3 Ω cm after annealed at 400 °C for 4 h. The variation of the resistivity is slight.