LAUSR

Abstract In this paper, the aluminum-zinc oxides composite (AZO) films are prepared through the sol-gel method which is a proposed material for fabrication the transparent conductive oxides (TCOs). Sodium hydroxide is used during synthesis process in order to change surface and optical properties of AZO films. The absorption spectrum, band gap and saturable intensity values are presented as functions of sodium atomic percent. As the ratio of Na to Zn atoms is 0.153, the best surface quality is obtained which has side effects on the optical properties of the films. The results confirm that by increasing the sodium atomic ratio, the optical band gap reduces and saturation intensity decrease. These films are used as optical bistable devices and show different threshold values for the hysteretic loops.