Optical and Electrical Properties of NiO/Ag/NiO Transparent Conductive Films

The NiO/Ag/NiO transparent conductive thin films were synthesized by magnetron sputtering at room temperature.The impact of the NiO and Ag layers thicknesses on the optical and electrical properties of the ntype NiO/Ag/NiO coatings were investigated with X-ray diffraction and atomic force microscopy.The preliminary results show that the thickness of NiO and Ag layers has a major impact.To be specific, as the thickness of both NiO and Ag layers increased, the transmittance, in 400~800 nm visible range, changed in an increase-decrease mode.The NiO(30 nm) /Ag (11 nm) /NiO(30 nm) multilayers were found to have better properties, including the largest transmittance of 84%, a sheet-resistance of 3.8 Ω/sq, and a carrier density of 7.476 × 10²¹ cm^-3.The small discrepancy between the measured and simulated transmittance in the posterior visible range possibly originated from the interface structures and refractive index approximation.