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Non-vacuum, single-step conductive transparent ZnO patterning by ultra-short pulsed laser annealing of solution-deposited nanoparticles

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Abstract

A solution-processable, high-concentration transparent ZnO nanoparticle (NP) solution was successfully synthesized in a new process. A highly transparent ZnO thin film was fabricated by spin coating without vacuum deposition. Subsequent ultra-short-pulsed laser annealing at room temperature was performed to change the film properties without using a blanket high temperature heating process. Although the as-deposited NP thin film was not electrically conductive, laser annealing imparted a large conductivity increase and furthermore enabled selective annealing to write conductive patterns directly on the NP thin film without a photolithographic process. Conductivity enhancement could be obtained by altering the laser annealing parameters. Parametric studies including the sheet resistance and optical transmittance of the annealed ZnO NP thin film were conducted for various laser powers, scanning speeds and background gas conditions. The lowest resistivity from laser-annealed ZnO thin film was about 4.75×10−2 Ω cm, exhibiting a factor of 105 higher conductivity than the previously reported furnace-annealed ZnO NP film and is even comparable to that of vacuum-deposited, impurity-doped ZnO films within a factor of 10. The process developed in this work was applied to the fabrication of a thin film transistor (TFT) device that showed enhanced performance compared with furnace-annealed devices. A ZnO TFT performance test revealed that by just changing the laser parameters, the solution-deposited ZnO thin film can also perform as a semiconductor, demonstrating that laser annealing offers tunability of ZnO thin film properties for both transparent conductors and semiconductors.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support to UC Berkeley by the US National Science Foundation under the STTR Grant No. IIP-0930594 through AppliFlex LLC and to KAIST by the Korea Ministry of Knowledge Economy (Grant No. 10032145) is gratefully acknowledged. The authors also would like to thank Reena Zalpuri from the Electron Microscope Lab in UC Berkeley for assistance in recording TEM images and Prof. Nathan Cheung of the EECS Department, UC Berkeley for useful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    Daeho Lee, Heng Pan, Eunpa Kim & Costas P. Grigoropoulos

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, 305-701, Korea

    Seung Hwan Ko

  3. AppliFlex LLC, 1244 Reamwood Ave., Sunnyvale, CA, USA

    Hee K. Park

Authors
  1. Daeho Lee
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  2. Heng Pan
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  6. Costas P. Grigoropoulos
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Correspondence to Costas P. Grigoropoulos.

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Lee, D., Pan, H., Ko, S.H. et al. Non-vacuum, single-step conductive transparent ZnO patterning by ultra-short pulsed laser annealing of solution-deposited nanoparticles. Appl. Phys. A 107, 161–171 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-012-6792-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-012-6792-y

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