Effects of intermediate GAZO layer thickness on the properties of GAZO/Ag/GAZO/Ag/GAZO film

• We fabricated the GAZO/Ag/GAZO/Ag/GAZO multilayer thin film, which has a higher figure of merit than ITO thin film.
• The figure of merit is a performance metric for transparent conductive thin films.
• The fabricated multilayer thin films could be applied the transparent conductive electrodes.

GAZO/Ag/GAZO/Ag/GAZO transparent conductive multilayer films were deposited by facing-target sputtering (FTS) methods at room temperature. As-deposited multilayer thin films consisted of Ag metal thin film layers and transparent conductive GAZO thin film layers. The fabricated multilayer thin films have a low sheet resistance and a high transmittance in the visible range. As a result, the sheet resistance, average transmittance in the visible range, and FOM (figure of merit) of the fabricated multilayer thin film with optimal layer thicknesses (50/12/75/12/50 nm) were 2.7 Ω/sq, 82%, and 4.9 × 10− 2 Ω− 1, respectively (T: 0.82, Rsh: 2.7 Ω/sq).