Aluminum-doped zinc oxide is a promising material for
the transparent-conducting layer in photovoltaic devices.
Zinc oxide has been grown by vacuum sputtering [1,2],
thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD) [3], plasmaenhanced
chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) [4], expanding
thermal plasma [5], and vacuum arc deposition [6].
Most of these processes are performed under vacuum in
batch process chambers. In order to reduce the cost of
producing thin-film photovoltaics, it is desirable to develop
alternative processes that operate at atmospheric pressure
and can be applied to continuous, in-line manufacturing.