Study of Optical and Electrical Properties of Ag/ITO Multi-layer Transparent Electrodes

The samples of Ag/ITO multilayer films with different Ag insert layer thickness (0.5, 2, 4 nm) were prepared on sapphire and p-GaN substrates. The effects of the Ag layer thickness, annealing temperature and annealing time on the transmittance, sheet resistance and specific contact resistance of Ag/ITO films were investigated. The experiment results show that the transmittance is obviously affected by Ag insert layer thickness. The Current-voltage (I-V) measurements indicate that the sheet resistance and specific contact resistance of Ag/ITO film on p-GaN are lower than those of single ITO film. The samples with Ag(0.5nm)/ITO film on p-GaN produce the low specific contact resistance of similar to 1.3 86 x 10(-4)Omega.cm(2), low sheet resistance of similar to 11 Omega/sq and high transmittance of similar to 90% at 455nm when the samples are annealed at 600 degrees C for 10 minutes.