Effect of annealing temperature in nitrogen atmosphere and under vacuum on structural, optical and electrical properties of sputtered ITO/Ni/ITO multilayer

• Published in: Applied physics. A, Materials science & processing Materials science & processing, 2022-04, Vol.128 (4), Article 338
• Main Authors: Agdad, Abdelali, Tchenka, Abdelaziz, Chaik, Mounir, Hnawi, Salma Kaotar, Azizan, Mustapha, Ech-chamikh, Elmaati, Ijdiyaou, Youssef
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Annealing; Applied physics; Characterization and Evaluation of Materials; Condensed Matter Physics; Electrical properties; Figure of merit; Glass substrates; Machines; Manufacturing; Materials science; Multilayers; Nanotechnology; Nitrogen; Optical and Electronic Materials; Optical measurement; Optical properties; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Processes; Surfaces and Interfaces; Thin Films
• ISSN: 0947-8396; 1432-0630
• DOI: 10.1007/s00339-022-05463-7

ITO/Ni/ITO multilayers were deposited on glass substrates by RF sputtering. These multilayers were annealed at temperatures between 200 and 500 °C, under two different atmospheres: nitrogen gas (N 2 ) and vacuum. Optical measurements show that the films treated under nitrogen gas, have a higher average transmittance in the visible range, which reaches 84% after annealing at 500 °C. While for vacuum annealed films, it reaches only 69%. However, for the electrical properties, the vacuum-treated films show better performance with an electrical resistivity of 1.42 × 10 –4 Ω cm at the annealing temperature of 500 °C, which is much lower than that found in N 2 -treated films (5.54 × 10 –4 Ω cm). Based on the figure of merit, it is found that the thin films annealed in N 2 show better performance and the maximum reached was 2.3 × 10 –2 Ω −1 .