Abstract
The effects of gas atmosphere and sputter time for depositing silver (Ag) on the structural, optical and electrical properties of ZnO/Ag/ZnO transparent conducting oxide (TCO) films have been investigated with sputtering Ag target in Ar or N-2. It was found that the properties of the Ag and ZnO/Ag/ZnO films are quite dependent on the gas environment and the sputter time. The optical transparency of ZnO/Ag/ZnO films was easily controllable when sputtering the Ag target in N2 rather than in Ar. With optimizing the sputter time and atmosphere for Ag adsorption, the ZnO-based TCO films where the Ag layer was embedded in N-2 yielded low resistance of 6.1-9.1 Omega/sq and high transmittance of 93-96% over the visible range of wavelengths.