The effect of thickness on the optical and electrical properties of Hf doped indium oxide thin films

The doping of Hf has great potential to adjust the optical and electrical properties of In2O3 films, which has rarely been reported. In this paper, Hf-doped indium oxide films (IHFO) with excellent optical (average transmittance: 95.81%) and electrical properties (resistivity: 7.1 × 10−4 Ω cm) were deposited by RF sputtering on the glass substrate. X-ray photoelectronic spectra (XPS) showed that Hf4+ substituted In3+, resulting in an increase in carrier concentration and thus decreased resistivity. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) indicated that the change in the preferred orientation of IHFO film from (400) to (222) leads to different shape grains, which are associated with nuclei merging due to thickness increase. As the optical path of the visible light in film increase with film thickness, the film's visible light absorption is enhanced, resulting in the average transmittance of the films decreasing from 95.81% to 87.68%. Considering the effect of thickness on optical and electrical properties, the IHFO film at a thickness of 893 nm exhibits the highest FOM value of 2.85 × 10−2 Ω−1 with high average transmittance (89.84%) and low sheet resistance(12 Ω/sq). This result indicates that the IHFO film deposited with optimal thickness can be an alternative for high-performance TCO in various optoelectronic fields. •The IHFO thin films with different thicknesses are fabricated on the glass substrates by magnetron sputtering.•Doping the Hf element improves the transparency of IHFO films.•IHFO films have high transmittance and low resistivity, making them useable as TCO.