Influence of thermal annealing on structural, morphological, optical and electrical properties of NiO-Cu composite thin films

p-type NiO-Cu composite thin films were deposited using DC reactive magnetron sputtering technique. The deposited films were annealed in air at different temperatures and characterized for studying the structural, morphological, compositional, optical and electrical properties. X-ray diffraction analysis revealed that the crystallite size increased with increasing the annealing temperature and the films exhibited a stable cubic structure even at higher annealing temperatures. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy studies indicated that all the annealed films have single phase NiO-Cu. Morphological studies showed that the grain size and roughness increased with increasing the annealing temperature. The annealed films exhibited high optical transmittance with lowest resistivity when compared to as deposited films.