Effect of Ag Layer Thickness and Interference of Cu-SnO2/Ag/Cu-SnO2 (CTO/Ag/CTO) Multilayer Thin Film on the Electrical and Optical Properties

Abstract

The present study reports the successful fabrication of CTO/Ag/CTO multilayer thin films with different sandwiched layer (Ag) thickness on a glass substrate by the E-beam evaporation Method. The influence of sandwiched layer thickness and stacking of layers on electrical and optical properties was investigated. Several analytical tools such as X-ray diffraction, Atomic Force microscopy, Hall Effect measurement, and UV-visible spectroscopy were used to investigate the morphological, electrical, and optical properties of the multilayer thin film structure. Multilayer thin film with 14nm Ag thickness exhibited a good combination of conductivity and transmittance (i.e. 4.64 × 104 Ω-1cm-1, 69.3%). The conduction mechanism can be explained on the basis of the islands growth mechanism of Volmer-weber model as Ag film was grown on an amorphous CTO surface. The Haacke’s figure of merit was calculated for valuing the overall performance of the transparent conducting film. The maximum figure of merit is reported as 8.7 × 10-3 Ω-1 for multilayer thin film having Ag thickness of 14nm.