Nearly full-dense and fine-grained AZO:Y ceramics sintered from the corresponding nanoparticles
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NANO EXPRESS
Open Access
Nearly full-dense and fine-grained AZO:Y ceramics sintered from the corresponding nanoparticles Ye Yang1, Pinjun Lan1, Muqin Wang1, Tiefeng Wei1, Ruiqin Tan2 and Weijie Song1*
Abstract Aluminum-doped zinc oxide ceramics with yttria doping (AZO:Y) ranging from 0 to 0.2 wt.% were fabricated by pressureless sintering yttria-modified nanoparticles in air at 1,300°C. Scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction analysis, a physical property measurement system, and a densimeter were employed to characterize the precursor nanoparticles and the sintered AZO ceramics. It was shown that a small amount of yttria doping can remarkably retard the growth of the as-received precursor nanoparticles, further improve the microstructure, refine the grain size, and enhance the density for the sintered ceramic. Increasing the yttria doping to 0.2 wt.%, the AZO:Y nanoparticles synthetized by a coprecipitation process have a nearly sphere-shaped morphology and a mean particle diameter of 15.1 nm. Using the same amount of yttria, a fully dense AZO ceramic (99.98% of theoretical density) with a grain size of 2.2 μm and a bulk resistivity of 4.6 × 10−3 Ωcm can be achieved. This kind of AZO:Y ceramic has a potential to be used as a high-quality sputtering target to deposit ZnO-based transparent conductive films with better optical and electrical properties. Keywords: AZO:Y Ceramic, Nanoparticles, Coprecipitation, Sintering, Finer grain, Nearly full density PACS: 61, 61.66.Fn, 61.72.uj
Background Transparent conductive oxides (TCO) as transparent electrodes have been widely used in thin-film solar cells and flat panel display devices [1,2]. The commonly applied TCO materials are In2O3:Sn (ITO), SnO2:F (FTO), and ZnO:Al (AZO) [1,2]. AZO has attracted much interest as a potential substitute for ITO due to the abundance of its constituent elements in nature, relatively low deposition temperature, and stability in hydrogen plasma [2,3]. The magnetron-sputtering ceramic target is one of the most widely used methods for AZO film deposition [3]. In the sputtering system, the target plays a major role in achieving high-quality films [4-7]. Generally, the target for sputtering TCO films should have a high density, finer grain size, and better conductance [7-11], which will be helpful for avoiding the formation of nodules to * Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Ningbo Institute of Material Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Science, No. 519, Zhuangshi Road, Zhenhai District, Ningbo 315201, People’s Republic of China Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
prolong the target lifetime [7,8], increasing the deposition rate and film uniformity [9] and meeting the requirement of direct current (DC) sputtering. The attempts to enhance the density of the AZO ceramic target become a crucial issue for both researchers and target manufacturers [7,8,12-14]. Sun et al. [12] fabricated an ultrahigh-density AZO sintered body (>99.7% theoretical de
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