Study of the optical, electrical and corrosion resistance properties of AZO layers deposited by DC pulsed magnetron sputtering

• High-quality AZO films successfully deposited by DC pulsed magnetron sputtering.
• Layers grown at 3 × 10− 3 mbar shows very low resistance values of 6.8 × 10− 4 Ωcm.
• Layers grown at 3 × 10− 3 mbar shows very high transmittance values above 90%
• Layers grown at 3 × 10− 3 mbar shows very high corrosion resistance values of 10− 6 Ω.
• Corrosion resistance properties haven correlated to optoelectronic properties.

Aluminium-doped zinc oxide (AZO) is a common material used as a front contact layer on chalcopyrite CuInGaSe2 (CIGS)-based thin-film solar cells since it combines optimum optical and electrical properties with low cost and abundant elemental availability. Low-resistivity and high-transmission front contacts are required to develop high-performance CIGS solar cells. However, the durability of the cells is highly influenced by the corrosion resistance behaviour of the AZO layers. In this work, an exhaustive study of the aluminium-doped zinc oxide layers (AZO) deposited by pulsed DC magnetron sputtering (MS) has been performed. The optical, electrical and electrochemical corrosion resistance properties of the AZO layers have been evaluated as a function of the deposition pressure. The results show that adjusting the deposition pressure could develop AZO layers with very high electrochemical corrosion resistance in chlorinated aqueous media combined with optimum electrical and optical properties. Layers grown at 3 × 10− 3 mbar pressure present very high corrosion resistance values (in the order of 106 Ω) and very high electrochemical stability, indicating no tendency for electrochemical corrosion degradation. Besides, these layers are highly transparent with an average transmittance in the visible range above 90% and with a low resistivity of 6.8 × 10− 4 Ωcm for a 1000 nm films thickness, making them optimum candidate front contact for high-performance and high durability CIGS solar cells.