reviewoftcothinfilms-tau.docVIP

Review of TCO Thin Films Abstract The present review paper reports on the physical properties, status, prospects for further development, and applications of polycrystalline or amorphous, transparent, and conducting oxides (TCO) semiconductors. The coexistence of electrical conductivity and optical transparency in these materials depends on the nature, number, and atomic arrangements of metal cations in crystalline or amorphous oxide structures, on the resident morphology, and on the presence of intrinsic or intentionally introduced defects. The important TCO semiconductors are impurity-doped ZnO, In2O3, SnO2 and CdO, as well as the ternary compounds Zn2SnO4, ZnSnO3, Zn2In2O5, Zn3In2O6, In2SnO4, CdSnO3, and multi-component oxides consisting of combinations of ZnO, In2O3 and SnO2. Sn doped In2O3 (ITO) and F doped SnO2 TCO thin films are the preferable materials for most present applications. The expanding use of TCO materials, especially for the production of transparent electrodes for optoelectronic device applications, is endangered by the scarcity and high price of In. This situation drives the search for alternative TCO materials to replace ITO. The electrical resistivity of the novel TCO materials should be ~10-5 ??cm, typical absorption coefficient smaller than 104 cm-1 in the near UV and visible range, with optical band gap ~3 eV. At present, ZnO:Al and ZnO:Ga (AZO and GZO) semiconductors could become good alternatives to ITO for thin-film transparent electrode applications. The best candidates are AZO thin films, which have low resistivity of the order of 10?4?.cm, inexpensive source materials, and are non-toxic. However, development of large area deposition techniques are still needed to enable the production of AZO and GZO films on large area substrates with a high deposition rate. In addition to the required electrical and optical characteristics, applied TCO materials should be stable in hostile environment containing acidic and alkali solutions, oxidiz