Atmospheric spatial atomic layer deposition of In-doped ZnO

Indium-doped zinc oxide (ZnO:In) has been grown by spatial atomic layer deposition at atmospheric pressure (spatial-ALD). Trimethyl indium (TMIn), diethyl zinc (DEZ) and deionized water have been used as In, Zn and O precursor, respectively. The metal content of the films is controlled in the range from In/[In+Zn] = 0 to 23% by co-injecting the vaporized metal precursors (i.e. DEZ and TMIn) in the deposition region and varying their flows. A high doping efficiency (up to 95%) is achieved, resulting in films with very high carrier density (6·1020 cm-3), low resistivity (3 mO·cm) and high transparency in the visible range (> 85%). The morphology of the films changes from polycrystalline to amorphous with increasing indium content above 15%, while maintaining a low resistivity value (<7 mO·cm). Spatial-ALD combines a fine tuning of the composition, morphology and electrical properties of ZnO:In films with high deposition rates (> 0.1 nm/s)