Effect of Cu addition on the optical, electrical, and structural properties of ultrathin Ag-based oxide/metal/oxide multilayer films

Ga and Al co-doped ZnO (GAZO) were used as oxide layers to fabricate GAZO/Ag/GAZO sandwich multilayer transparent conductive films. The effects of Cu addition in the middle layer on the optical, electrical, and structural properties of multilayer films were investigated. The influences of the Ag-Cu layer and GAZO layer thickness on the optical and electrical properties of multilayer films were further studied. The experimental results show that co-sputtering Cu and adding an ultrathin Cu seed layer changed the growth pattern of Ag films. GAZO/Ag-Cu/GAZO and GAZO/Cu/Ag/GAZO multilayer films exhibit high optical transparency and high electric conductivity. The annealing treatment can enhance the optical and electrical properties of the GAZO/Ag-Cu/GAZO and GAZO/Cu/Ag/GAZO multilayer films. The lowest sheet resistance of 9.49 omega sq- 1 and maximum average light transmittance in the visible range of 95.74 % can be obtained for the GAZO/Ag-Cu/GAZO films. The corresponding figure of merit is 68.18x10- 3 omega- 1. The addition of Cu in the GAZO/Ag/GAZO multilayer films led to high transmittance and low resistivity, which can be used in various photoelectronic fields to replace indium tin oxide films.