ZnO/Cu/ZnO (ZCZ) thin films were deposited at room temperature on a glass substrate using direct current (DC) and radio frequency (RF, 13.56 MHz) magnetron sputtering and then the effect of post-deposition electron irradiation on the structural, optical, electrical and transparent heater properties of the films were considered. ZCZ films that were electron beam irradiated at 500 eV showed an increase in the grain sizes of their ZnO(102) and (201) planes to 15.17 nm and 11.51 nm, respectively, from grain sizes of 13.50 nm and 10.60 nm observed in the as deposited films. In addition, the film’s optical and electrical properties also depended on the electron irradiation energies. The highest opto-electrical performance was observed in films electron irradiated at 500 eV. In a heat radiation test, when a bias voltage of 18 V was applied to the film that had been electron irradiated at 500 eV, its steady state temperature was about 90.5 °C. In a repetition test, it reached the steady state temperature within 60 s at all bias voltages.

Transparent conductive tungsten (W) doped indium oxide (In2O3; IWO) films were deposited at different substrate bias voltage (-Vb) conditions at room temperature on glass substrates by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering and the influence of the substrate bias voltage on the optical and electrical properties was investigated. As the substrate bias voltage increased to -350 Vb, the IWO films showed a lower resistivity of 2.06 × 10-4 Ωcm. The lowest resistivity observed for the film deposited at -350 Vb could be attributed to its higher mobility, of 31.8 cm2/Vs compared with that (6.2 cm2/Vs) of the films deposited without a substrate bias voltage (0 Vb). The highest visible transmittance of 84.1 % was also observed for the films deposited at the -350 Vb condition. The X-ray diffraction observation indicated the IWO films deposited without substrate bias voltage were amorphous phase without any diffraction peaks, while the films deposited with bias voltage were polycrystalline with a low In2O3 (222) diffraction peak and relatively high intensity (431) and (046) diffraction peaks. From the observed visible transmittance and electrical properties, it is concluded that the opto-electrical performance of the polycrystalline IWO film deposited by RF magnetron sputtering can be enhanced with effective substrate bias voltage conditions.