Enhanced mobility in visible-to-near infrared transparent Al-doped ZnO films

•Zn/AZO multilayered annealed films show high transparency in VIS-to-NIR.•The film shows high mobility value of 46.8 cm2/Vs.•The film shows low resistivity value of 2.43 × 10−4 Ω-cm.•The Figure of merit of the film is 8.6 × 10−2 Ω−1 which is quite high.

A novel technique of depositing multilayered films by introducing metal Zn layers in between Al-doped ZnO (AZO) films by using RF and DC magnetron sputtering has been proposed to enhance the electrical conductivity through mobility enhancement. The multilayered Zn/AZO films when annealed at 823 K, not only maintains high transparency in the visible-to-near infrared region but also shows very high mobility of 46 cm2/Vs which is thirteen times more than that of the AZO film and resistivity as low as 2.43 × 10−4 Ω-cm. The highest figure of merit value is 8.6 × 10−2 Ω−1 which is more than double to that of the value of AZO film suggesting that these Zn/AZO films are very promising for solar cell applications.

Graphical abstractThe multilayered annealed Zn/AZO film maintains very high transparency in the VIS-to-NIR region and also shows very high mobility 46.8 cm2/Vs and resistivity 2.43 × 10−4 Ω-cm which indicates its suitability in solar cells as TCO.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide