Effects of hydrogen in working gas for sputter-deposition on surface morphology and microstructure of indium tin oxide thin films grown at room temperature

Surface morphology and microstructure of indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films sputter deposited without heat treatment were obviously different from each other depending on the hydrogen concentration [H] in the working gas. The film surface became smoother with increasing [H] to 1%, but nucleation and growth of grains were apparent above [H] = 1.5%. The width of columnar grains in the ≤200 nm-thick films narrowed from ≈100 nm to ≈50 nm with increasing [H] from 0% to 1.5%. Randomly oriented and agglomerated grains were observed for the film deposited with [H] = 3.6%. Hydrogen added to the working gas induced reduction of the grain size, and then resulted in lowering of the carrier mobility.