Properties of Indium Tin Oxide/Amorphous Alloys Bi-Layer Films as Transparent Electrodes

The amorphous alloy films of ZrCu and AgMgAl, layers deposited by co-sputtering was utilized as the metallic layer in the bi-layer structure transparent conductive electrode of ZrCu/ITO and AgMgAl/ITO deposited on the PET substrate using magnetron sputtering at room temperature. In the transmittance performance, the 30 nm ITO/3 nm ZrCu and 30 nm ITO/15 nm AgMgAl films could show the optical transmittance of 73 % and 70% at visible light of 550 nm wavelength and maintain the stable transmittance of 70~75% from visible light to infrared region. Meanwhile, the 30 nm ITO/9 nm ZrCu and the 30 nm ITO/15 nm AgMgAl films could show the better sheet resistance of 136 Ω/sq. and 135 Ω/sq. respectively. In addition, compared with the ITO film, the current metallic glasses were utilized as the metallic layer in the bi-layer structure transparent conductive electrode showed the better bending properties. The relative change of resistivity is below 0.4, significantly lower than that of the commercial PET/ITO product. The ZCI would exhibit lower variation in resistance owing to short crack propagated in the amorphous alloy of ZrCu layer after 10000 cycles bending test.