Effects of air annealing on the optical, electrical, and structural properties of nanostructured ZnS/Au/ZnS films

In this paper, transparent conductive ZnS/Au/ZnS nano-multilayer films have been designed and the optimum thickness of gold and zinc sulfide layers are calculated. The conductive transparent ZnS/Au/ZnS nano-multilayer structure with optimized thickness have also been fabricated on a glass substrate by thermal evaporation and have been annealed in air at different temperatures. The electrical, optical and structural properties of the films such as electrical resistivity, optical transmittance, grain size have been obtained. X-ray diffraction patterns show that increase in annealing temperature increases the crystallinity of the structures. Moreover, Scanning electron microscope images of the samples show that the grain sizes become larger by increasing the annealing temperature which is in consistence with the X-ray diffraction analysis. (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.