Effect of Ru addition on the properties of Al-doped ZnO thin films prepared by radio frequency magnetron sputtering on polyethylene terephthalate substrate

Abstract The addition of ruthenium in aluminum-doped zinc oxide transparent conducting thin films was deposited on polyethylene terephthalate at 20 °C by radio frequency magnetron sputtering technique. The structure and electrical properties of the films were investigated with respect to variation of Ru concentration. The XRD and FESEM results show that the film with 0.5 wt% Ru doping has the best crystallinity and larger pyramid-like grains, therefore the resistivity reached to a lowest value of 9.1 × 10−4 Ωcm. The low carrier mobilities of the films (3–7.2 cm2 V−1 s−1), however, were limited by ionized impurity scattering and grain boundary scattering mechanisms since the carrier concentrations were ranged from 2.2 × 1020 to 9.5 × 1020 cm−3. The transmittance in the visible is greater than 80% with the optical band gap in the order of 3.352–3.391 eV.