Quality improvement of high-performance transparent conductive Ti-doped GaZnO thin film

• Substrate heating and annealing were used for superior Ti-doped GZO (GTZO) films.
• Structural and optoelectronic properties of the GTZO films were clearly studied.
• High optical transmittance over 94.15% was obtained in a visible wavelength range.
• Low resistivity of 2.97 × 10 −4 Ω-cm was achieved by using GTZO films.

Ti-doped GaZnO transparent conductive oxide films were deposited at various substrate temperatures by radio-frequency magnetron sputtering to examine the effects of crystalline quality on thin-film optoelectronic properties. The results show a low resistivity of 2.97 × 10 −4 Ω-cm and a high optical transmittance of 94.15% (wavelength region of 400–800 nm) in 300-nm-thick Ti-doped GaZnO thin films grown at the substrate temperature of 300 °C, with a post-annealing temperature of 400 °C. To evaluate the performance of Ti-doped GaZnO transparent conductive oxide films, this study employed the figure of merit (ΦTC), expressed as ΦTC = T10/RS (T: transmittance RS: sheet resistance), and calculated as 55.2 × 10 −3 Ω− 1, which is suitable for high-performance optoelectronic device applications.