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Influence on Post-treatment Process on Optical and Electrical Properties of IZO Thin Films

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Abstract

In this paper, we studied the post-treatment effect in order to optimize the optical and electrical properties of the IZO transparent conductive oxide (TCO). We used the rapid thermal annealing (RTA) process, which provides direct thermal energy, and the micro-wave treatment (MWT) process, which provides vibrational energy of particles among the various methods. The sheet resistance and transparency were investigated in order to comparatively evaluate their electrical and optical characteristics. First, the RTA process shows a sharp increase in sheet resistance, which is due to thermal damage, as a result of sheet resistance, whereas the MWT process shows a stable change in sheet resistance with low resistance values, which are in a range of 17.73–33.95 Ω/□. The sheet resistance of the IZO film after MWT was improved by approximately 47% compared to the IZO film after RTA. The transmittance after both the RTA and the MWT was then similarly observed to be 70% over in the visible light region of 400–700. This result therefore indicates that the MWT process does not cause thermal damage to the IZO films, and it provides excellent electrical and optical characteristics.

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Data Availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article, and the datasets used and detailed analyzed reports during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (NRF-2021R1A6A3A01086866, NRF-2022R1F1A1060655), the Nano-Material Technology Development Program, NRF, Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning (2009–0082580), and in part by the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT) grant funded by the Korea Government (MOTIE) via the Competency Development Program for Industry Specialist under grant P0020966.

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Author notes

  1. Jinsu Jung, Doowon Lee and Myoungsu Chae have authors contributed equally.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Semiconductor Systems Engineering, and Convergence Engineering for Intelligent Drone, Institute of Semiconductor and System IC, Sejong University, 209, Neungdong-ro, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, 05006, Korea

    Jinsu Jung, Doowon Lee, Myoungsu Chae & Hee-Dong Kim

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  1. Jinsu Jung
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  4. Hee-Dong Kim
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Contributions

Conceptualization: H-DK; Formal analysis and investigation: JJ, DL, and MC; Writing—original draft preparation: JJ and MC; Writing—review and editing: DL and H-DK; Funding acquisition: H-DK; Resources: MC; Supervision: H-DK.

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Correspondence to Hee-Dong Kim.

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Jung, J., Lee, D., Chae, M. et al. Influence on Post-treatment Process on Optical and Electrical Properties of IZO Thin Films. Trans. Electr. Electron. Mater. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42341-024-00517-4

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