Electrical and optical properties of ITO and ITO:Zr transparent conducting films

ITO and ITO:Zr films were deposited on glass substrates by magnetron sputtering. Electrical and optical properties of the films at different experiment parameters such as substrate temperature, oxygen flow rate and annealing temperature were contrastively studied. The increase in substrate temperature remarkably improves the electrical and optical properties of the films. ITO:Zr films show better quality at low substrate temperature. The excessive oxygen can worsen the optical properties of the films. Better optical–electrical properties of the films can be achieved after the proper annealing treatment. Obvious Burstin–Moss effect can be revealed by transmittance spectra with different parameters, and the direct transition models show the change of optical band gap. ITO:Zr films prepared by co-sputtering show better optical–electrical properties than ITO films.