e investigated the effects of post-annealing in vacuum, nitrogen, and hydrogen atmospheres on the structural, electrical, and optical properties of 600 nm thick Al-doped ZnO (ZnO:Al) thin films deposited by RF magnetron sputtering at room temperature. Post-annealing in hydrogen atmosphere at 400℃ for 1 hour showed the most significant improvement in electrical properties. Resistivity decreased from 9.11×10⁻³ to 1.4×10⁻³ Ω·cm, electron mobility increased from 4.11 to 18.23 cm²/V·s, and electron carrier concentration increased from 1.63×10²⁰ to 4.85×10²⁰ cm⁻³. In contrast, post-annealing in vacuum and nitrogen atmospheres resulted in degraded electrical properties due to oxygen and nitrogen chemisorption at grain boundaries. The enhancement in hydrogen-annealed films was attributed to the formation of additional oxygen vacancies and desorption of adsorbed oxygen species from grain boundaries. All films maintained excellent optical transparency of 80-90% in the visible range. The optical bandgap exhibited a blue-shift from 3.365 eV to 3.624 eV due to the Burstein-Moss effect induced by the increased electron carrier concentration. These results confirmed that hydrogen atmosphere post-annealing is the most effective method for enhancing the electrical conductivity of ZnO:Al thin films while maintaining high optical transparency.
