A study on 100 MeV O7+ irradiated SnO2/Ag/SnO2 multilayer as transparent electrode for flat panel display application

The multilayer thin films of SnO2/Ag/SnO2 were deposited using electron-beam and thermal evaporation for flat panel display application. The as-prepared SnO2/Ag/SnO2 specimen was irradiated with 100 MeV O7+ ions by varying the fluences 1 × 1012 and 5 × 1012 ions/cm2. The pristine and irradiated films were investigated using XRD, SEM, AFM and Raman to find out modification in the structure and surface morphology of the films. UV–Vis and Hall measurement techniques were used to investigate the optical and electrical properties respectively. It was observed that the roughness of the film after irradiation (for the fluence of 1 × 1012 ions/cm2) ​ decreased to 0.68 nm from 1.6 nm and showed an increase in roughness to 1.35 nm on increasing the fluence to 5 × 1012 ions/cm2. This oxide/metal/oxide structure fulfills the basic requirements of a TCE, like high-transmittance >75% for pristine and >80% for the fluence of 1 × 1012 ions/cm2 over a broad spectrum of visible light for practical applications. The multilayer structure shows change in the electrical resistivity from 1.6 × 10−3 Ω cm to 6.3 × 10−3 Ω cm after irradiation.