Highly conductive and transparent reduced graphene oxide/aluminium doped zinc oxide nanocomposite for the next generation solar cell applications

•Developed a new nanocomposite using aluminium doped zinc oxide and reduced graphene oxide nanosheets.•Proposed method is solution based and suitable for deposition on glass substrates.•The developed thin film is highly transparent with low resistivity.•Small addition of reduced graphene oxide nanosheets do influence the film structure and growth orientation.

In this paper, aluminum-doped zinc oxide(AZO)/reduced graphene oxide nano-composite thin films are synthesized by a one-pot, solution-processed method. The nanocomposite film has been extensively characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray-diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), Hall effect measurement and UV–Vis spectroscopy. It is found that the controlled addition of reduced graphene oxide into AZO can lower the film’s resistivity without causing significant degradation of optical transparency. In addition, nanocomposite films post-annealed at process temperature at 500 °C possesses the lowest resistivity and the highest optical transmittance and that further increases in the annealing temperature degrades the film’s property due to nucleation of other phases of the AZO.

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