Integrated extended planar plasma system for high-throughput manufacturing of sustainable transparent conducting oxides

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Transparent conducting oxides (TCO) are fundamental to various large area devices essential to the modern society (e.g. thin film solar cells, touch screens and flat-panel displays). This project aims at delivering an innovative pilot coating system by scaling up the unique high-target-utilisation-sputtering (HiTUS) coating process invented in the UK to roll-to-roll capacity. This will demonstrate its high-throughput coating potential for TCO production at radically lower consumption of energy and materials. Novel conducting oxides without using depleting indium metal will be formulated using an advanced "designer" approach, and specifically formulated coatings with remarkable TCO properties will be delivered through process optimisation, thus demonstrating the HiTUS technology's technical readiness for commercialisation and providing a solid foundation for entry to a growing $8bn market resulting from the ever increasing demand for TCO products based particularly on sustainable and environmentally friendly material resources. The coating system from this work can also be used in the fabrication of functional thin films for other advanced application devices.