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

透明导电氧化物（TCO）是现代社会必不可少的各种大面积设备的基础（例如薄膜太阳能电池，触摸屏和平板显示器）。该项目旨在通过将英国发明的独特的高目标利用率溅射（HiTUS）涂层工艺扩展到卷对卷产能，从而提供一个创新的试点涂层系统。这将证明其高通量涂层在从根本上降低能源和材料消耗的TCO生产方面的潜力。不使用耗尽铟金属的新型导电氧化物将采用先进的“设计师”方法配制，具有卓越TCO性能的专门配制涂层将通过工艺优化交付。因此，证明了HiTUS技术商业化的技术准备，并为进入不断增长的80亿美元市场提供了坚实的基础，这是由于对基于可持续和环保材料资源的TCO产品的需求不断增加。该涂层系统也可用于其他高级应用器件的功能薄膜的制造。

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.