Effect of annealing on the transparent conducting properties of fluorine doped zinc oxide and tin oxide thin films – A comparative study

•Vital thermal stability needed in TCO applications is studied for FZO & FTO films.•First comparative study on annealing induced changes in FTO and FZO films.•Reasonable correlation among the studies is established.

Fluorine doped zinc oxide (FZO) and fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) films were deposited onto glass substrates at a temperature of 350 °C using spray pyrolysis technique. The annealing induced changes in the structural, optical, electrical and surface morphological properties were studied. The structural studies reveal that the post deposition annealing treatment causes drastic changes in the orientation of the crystallites in the case of FZO films whereas it does not affect significantly the structural properties of FTO films. These annealing induced changes in the structural properties of FZO film are reflected appropriately in optical, electrical and surface morphological properties also. But, no noticeable changes were observed in the case of FTO films.