Effect of zincone ratio on mechanical reliability of aluminum-doped zinc oxide-zincone multilayer thin films grown on flexible substrate using atomic/molecular layer deposition hybrid techniques

The combination of atomic and molecular layer deposition techniques enables the fabrication of various functional organic-inorganic multilayer thin-film structures. The alloys in metal oxide thin films and organic metalcone thin films demonstrate many technical advantages over conventional metal oxide single-layer thin films in terms of mechanical and electrical properties. This study investigates the effect of multilayer thin-film structures, which are fabricated as zinc oxide (ZnO) and aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) single thin films and ZnO-zincone and AZO-zincone multilayer thin films, on the mechanical and electrical properties of multilayer thin films. Various multilayer thin films are fabricated with variations in composition ratios between the inorganic and organic materials by controlling the process cycles. To analyze the reliability of thin multilayer films under external deformations, the variations in the electrical resistivity and crack generation of the thin films are measured using micro-tensile specimens. In addition, the variations with respect to the optical transmittance and surface morphology of multilayer thin films are analyzed using various composition ratios, and the results are compared with those obtained from single metal oxide thin films.