Nanosecond pulsed laser etching anti-reflective gratings and synchronous laser annealing for performance optimization of Ag/AZO thin films

• Published in: Ceramics international Vol. 50; no. 15; pp. 27176 - 27187
• Main Authors: Li, Bao-jia, Zhang, Hui-min, Ruan, Jia-jun, Wang, Lin, Wang, Zi-yan, Huang, Li-jing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.08.2024
• Subjects: Ag/AZO; Anti-reflective grating; Grating pitch; Laser annealing; Laser etching; Tilt angle; Grating pitch; Ag/AZO; Anti-reflective grating; Tilt angle; Laser annealing; Laser etching
• ISSN: 0272-8842
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ceramint.2024.05.015

Nanosecond pulsed laser etching for fabricating anti-reflective gratings and inducing synchronous laser annealing was performed on Ag/AZO films. The optimum grating pitch was determined by performance analyses of laser-etched unidirectional gratings, based on which laser-etched bidirectional gratings were fabricated to further determine the optimum grating tilt angle. The results revealed that with the increase of grating pitch, the grating ridge total-side-area was gradually decreased to cause a gradually weakened anti-reflective effect, but the superimposed heat-affected zones between adjacent grooves became smaller or even disappeared, which brought about different synchronous laser annealing effects. The unidirectional grating-textured film with a medium grating pitch of 200 μm showed the best overall performance under the combined influence from anti-reflective gratings and synchronous laser annealing. For the bidirectional gratings, although increasing the grating tilt angle did not change the grating ridge total-side-area, it would enable the laser energy to be more uniformly distributed on the whole film surface, producing a better synchronous laser annealing effect. The bidirectional grating-textured film with a grating tilt angle of 90° had the best overall performance with the highest FOM value of 2.18 × 10−2 Ω−1 that was ∼3.2 times that of the as-prepared film. The results are instructive for preparing high-performance TCO-based films.