Annealing effect on the optical and electrical properties of Al-doped ZnO transparent conducting films

The transparent conductive AZO (Al: 1 at.%) films were prepared on Corning fabricated Eagle 2000 glass substrate with strain point 666 degrees C by a sol-gel method. The annealing temperature is performed between 400 to 800 degrees C to study the annealing effect on the electrical and optical properties. The result shows that sample annealed at 700 degrees C slightly higher than the strain point of the substrate has the lowest resistivity, which is more than ten times lower than that of the other samples. However, the worst transmittance of 86% in the visible region has been also been observed for the sample annealed at 700 degrees C which is 2.5-3.6% less that of samples with different anneal temperatures.