The structural and optical properties of zinc oxide thin films deposited on PET substrate by r.f. magnetron sputtering

The transparent conducting films have been investigated extensively because of their excellent electrical and optical properties in many applications. For producing the LCD (Liquid Crystal Displays) and OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode), the transparent conductive films are mainly deposited on the glass. Using the plastic substrate has the advantages of low cost, light-weighted, and flexible characteristics; it is considered as the candidate substrate material for the portable and flexible LCD. The surface roughness measured by AFM was in the range 2.63 similar to 11.1nm. The result shows that the crystallite size increases with increasing the r.f power. The microstructure of ZnO film has a proud (002) orientation. The average transmittance of ZnO film can be obtained over 80% in the visible spectrum. The lowest resistivity obtained is 4.0x10-3 ohm-cm. The adhesion between ZnO films and PET substrate is good because there is no separate observed in this study.