Influence of substrate temperature on mechanical, optical and electrical properties of ZnO:Al films

▶ In this paper, the Al-doped zinc oxide (AZO) films were prepared on quartz glass flakes and silicon wafers by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering. Evolution of the structural, optical, electrical and mechanical properties of the AZO films as a function of substrate temperatures ranging from room temperature to 400 °C were analyzed. The results indicate that AZO films with a low resistivity value of 4.97 × 10−4 Ω cm a relatively higher adhesion and a high transparency above 90% can be prepared at a substrate temperature of 400 °C. Especially, the adhesion and hardness were seldom studied before but were investigated in details in this paper.