Narrow Results

High transparency and conductivity of transparent conducting oxide thin film are very important for improving the efficiency of solar cells. ZnO thin film is a better candidate for transparent conductive layer of solar cell. N-type ZnO thin films were prepared by radio-frequency magnetron sputtering on glass substrates. ZnO thin films underwent annealing treatment after deposition. The influence of the sputtering power on the surface morphology, the electrical and optical properties were studied by AFM, XRD, UV2450 and HMS-3000. The experimental results indicate that the crystal quality of ZnO thin film is improved and all films show higher c-axis orientation with increasing sputtering power from 50 to 125 W. The average transparency of ZnO thin films is higher than 90% in the range of 400–900 nm between the sputtering power of 50–100 W. After the rapid thermal annealing at 550°C for 300 s under N₂ ambient, the minimum resistivity reach to 10^-2Ω⋅cm.

Epitaxial growth of thin films is an effective approach to minimize the contribution of bulk carriers for topological insulator (TI) Bi₂Se₃. Parameters used in preparation process are key factors for growing high quality thin films, especially for TI films. In this paper, magnetron sputtering was used for growing Bi₂Se₃ thin films on Si (100) substrates. Different working pressure and sputtering power were investigated. High-quality films could be obtained under relatively low pressure and low power. Linear and nonsaturated high-field linear magnetoresistance (LMR) was observed in high-quality films.

Oxygen-deficient zinc oxides thin films with different levels of defects were prepared by using radio frequency magnetron sputtering method with sintered zinc oxide disk as target at different sputtering powers. The composition, structure and electrical properties of the prepared films were investigated. Under the present conditions, all the obtained films possessed würtzite structure, which were growing preferentially along the $c$-axis. The thickness of the films, the size of the zinc oxide grains and the content of Zn atoms increased with increasing sputtering power. In the films deposited at a sputtering power from 52W to 212W, the main defect was interstitial zinc. With increasing sputtering power, due to the enhanced number of interstitial zinc in the films, their room-temperature electrical resistivity would decrease, which was controlled by electron conduction. At increasing measurement temperature, their electrical resistivity would increase, owing to the decrease of defect concentration caused by oxidization.

High-performance flexible Bi₂Te₃-based thin films carry significant promise for future portable and wearable thermoelectric devices. In this study, a series of Bi${}_{0.5}$Sb${}_{1.5}$Te₃ thin films were deposited on polyimide substrates under different RF magnetron sputtering powers from 60 W to 140 W. The crystallinity, (00$l$) preferential orientation and atomic composition can be effectively modulated by varying the sputtering power. Benefiting from the synchronous enhancements of the electrical conductivity (mostly due to the enhanced carrier mobility) and Seebeck coefficient, the film deposited under the sputtering power 100 W presents the best PF of 12.86 $\mu$W cm${}^{-1}$K${}^{-2}$ at 360 K and the highest average PF of 11.25 $\mu$W cm${}^{-1}$K${}^{-2}$ in the temperature range of 300–560 K, which are much better than those of the films deposited under other sputtering powers.