Spray pyrolysis growth of a high figure of merit, nano-crystalline, p -type transparent conducting material at low temperature

In this letter, we demonstrate a low temperature (≈345 °C) growth method for Cu deficient CuCrO2 performed by spray pyrolysis using metal-organic precursors and a simple air blast nozzle. Smooth films were grown on glass substrates with a highest conductivity of 12 S/cm. The most conductive samples retain transparencies above 55% resulting in a figure of merit as high as 350 μS, which is the best performing p-type transparent conducting material grown by solution methods to date. Remarkably, despite the nano-crystallinity of the films, properties comparable with crystalline CuCrO2 are observed. No postannealing of the films is required in contrast to previous reports on crystalline material. The low processing temperature of this method means that the material can be deposited on flexible substrates. As this is a solution based technique, it is more attractive to industry as physical vapour deposition methods are slow and costly in comparison.