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The effect of substrate roughness on the properties of RF sputtered AZO thin film

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Abstract

Aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) is one of the most promising transparent conductive oxide materials for a front electrode in solar cells. In this work, we roughened substrate surface and sputtered AZO films, where the effect of roughness on various AZO properties was investigated. The haze values were largely enhanced, retaining other important properties such as conductivity and transparency. The optical band gap exhibits a clear blue shift because of the roughness. The possible cause of this shift may be variation in the Al content due to the different deposition and post-annealing mechanisms of AZO films on the roughened surface.

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Correspondence to Keiichi N. Ishihara.

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The supplementary material for this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2019.66.

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Hamada, K., Ogawa, T., Okumura, H. et al. The effect of substrate roughness on the properties of RF sputtered AZO thin film. MRS Communications 9, 697–701 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2019.66

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2019.66

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