Enhanced Electro-Thermal Properties of Gallium Doped Zinc Oxide (GZO) Thin-Films Transparent Heater Using 3D Printed Mask Technique

There is a growing popularity of incorporation of transparent conducting oxide in domestic applications such as car defrosters, smart windows, and other devices. We fabricated and investigated the different properties of thin film transparent heaters (TFTH) which are made by a 3D printed mask. Gallium doped zinc oxide (GZO) transparent conducting oxide thin film is used as active material and deposited on glass substrate via pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique. The thin films are ultra-smooth in nature and displayed excellent structural, electrical, optical, and thermal properties. The temperature dependent resistivity is measured using linear four probe methods, and the samples are highly conducting and showed low sheet resistance values. Optical transmission spectra revealed that the samples exhibit high optical transparency value of (>85%). These TFTH also demonstrated excellent joule heating effect. GZO based TFTH performed a consistent joule heating effect for many repeatable measurements with temperature reaching over 50 °C with a low input voltage of 8 V. These findings are encouraging for the use of GZO as a transparent conducting oxide material for applications in low-cost optoelectronics.