Variation of Structural, Optical, and Electrical properties of CuAl-SnO2/Ag/CuAl- SnO2 with Ag Layer Thickness

The present work reports the effect of sandwiched layer thickness on the structural, electrical, and optical properties of the (Cu, Al)-SnO2/Ag/(Cu, Al)-SnO2 (CAT/Ag/CAT) structures deposited by the E-beam evaporation technique on the glass substrate. The morphology of the Ag layer with increasing thickness affects the electrical and optical properties of the multilayer structure. The formation of Ag islands is confirmed by Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM) techniques, which follow the Volmer-Weber island growth mechanism. The multilayer structure with a 16 nm Ag thickness exhibits the highest transmittance and lowest resistivity, i.e., 84.75% and 3.24 × 10-5 Ω-cm, respectively. The Hackke figure of merit is calculated, and the CAT/Ag(16 nm)/CAT multilayer structure shows the best figure of merit of 4.48 × 10-2 Ω-1.