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

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.