Crystal Structure And Properties Of Cu-Al-O Thin Films

P-type transparent conducting oxide thin films have attracted much attention due to their potential applications in novel transparent p-n junction devices. In this work, the transparent conducting Cu-Al-O thin films were prepared by the plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition using metal organic precursors of Cu(acac)(2) and AI(acac)(3) (acac=acetylacetonate) while the substrate temperature was varied from 700 to 800degreesC. The x-ray diffraction and SEM results arc analyzed to investigate the structure of the as-deposited and annealed films. The films contain metal copper and small grains of CuAlO2. After annealing, metal copper turned into CuO. Hall effect measurements reveal that these films are p-type semiconductors and the film conductivity increased with the growth temperature.