Conduction and transmission analysis in gold nanolayers embedded in zinc oxide for flexible electronics

Gold-embedded zinc oxide structures are obtained in which the conduction mechanism changes from conduction through the oxide and activated tunneling between discontinuous metal islands to metallic conduction through a near-continuous layer, with increase in gold thickness. These structures can show resistivity as low as 5.2×10−5 Ω cm. Optical transmission is elucidated in terms of gold’s absorption due to interband electronic transitions, and free carrier absorption losses combined with limitation of the mean free path in discontinuous nanoparticles. The structures show transmittance, photopic averaged transmittance, and Haacke figure of merit values of 93%, 84%, and 15.1×10−3 Ω−1, respectively.