Influence of Ag thickness of aluminum-doped ZnO/Ag/aluminum-doped ZnO thin films

Abstract Highly conducting aluminum-doped ZnO (30 nm)/Ag (5–15 nm)/aluminum-doped ZnO (30 nm) multilayer thin films were deposited on glass substrate by rf magnetron sputtering (for top/bottom aluminum-doped ZnO films) and e-beam evaporation (for Ag film). The transmittance is more than 70% for wavelengths above 400 nm with the Ag layer thickness of 10 nm. The resistivity is 3.71 × 10 − 4 Ω-cm, which can be decreased to 3.8 × 10 − 5 Ω-cm with the increase of the Ag layer thickness to 15 nm. The Haacke figure of merit has been calculated for the films with the best value being 8 × 10 − 3 Ω − 1 . It was shown that the multilayer thin films have potential for applications in optoelectronics.