Abstract-Aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) is one of the promising transparent conductive oxide materials, which is expected to be an alternative to tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) that for long has been widely used in industry. The authors have been engaged in the development of AZO deposition process using inductively-coupled plasma assisted sputtering in a couple of years. This paper reports the results showing effectiveness of inductively coupled plasma (ICP) assisted sputtering in AZO film deposition process.
Inductively coupled plasma (ICP) assisted DC sputter-deposition was used for the deposition of Al-doped ZnO (AZO or ZnO:Al) thin films. With increasing ICP RF power, film properties including deposition rate, crystallinity, transparency and resistivity were improved. To understand the plasma-surface interaction, several plasma diagnostics were performed. Heat fluxes to the substrate were measured by thermal probes, number densities of sputtered metallic atom species were measured by absorption spectroscopy using hollow cathode lamps (HCL) and light emitting diodes (LEDs), and neutral gas temperatures were measured by external cavity diode laser (ECDL) absorption spectroscopy. As a result, it was revealed that the high density ICP heated the substrate through a high heat flux to the substrate, resulting in a high quality film deposition without the need for intentional substrate heating.The heat flux to the substrate was predominantly contributed by the plasma charged species, not by the neutral Ar atoms which were also significantly heated in the ICP. The substrate position where the highest quality films were obtained was found to coincide with the position where the substrate heat flux took the maximum value.
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