Electrochromic devices and methods may employ the addition of a defect-mitigating insulating layer which prevents electronically conducting layers and/or electrochromically active layers from contacting layers of the opposite polarity and creating a short circuit in regions where defects form. In some embodiments, an encapsulating layer is provided to encapsulate particles and prevent them from ejecting from the device stack and risking a short circuit when subsequent layers are deposited. The insulating layer may have an electronic resistivity of between about 1 and 10.sup.8 Ohm-cm. In some embodiments, the insulating layer contains one or more of the following metal oxides: aluminum oxide, zinc oxide, tin oxide, silicon aluminum oxide, cerium oxide, tungsten oxide, nickel tungsten oxide, and oxidized indium tin oxide. Carbides, nitrides, oxynitrides, and oxycarbides may also be used.

Provided are a conductive laminate having low electric resistance and high transmittance over a long period of time, various optical elements provided with the conductive laminate, and a method for manufacturing the conductive laminate. In the conductive laminate 1 according to the present technology, a first transparent material layer 3, a metal layer 4 mainly composed of silver, and a second transparent material layer 5 are laminated on at least one surface of the transparent substrate 2 in this order from the transparent substrate 2 side. The first transparent material layer 3 is composed of a composite metal oxide containing at least zinc and tin and containing 10 atomic % or more and 90 atomic % or less of tin. The second transparent material layer 5 is composed of a metal oxide containing zinc and having a tin content of 10 atom % or less.

Disclosed are a precursor solution for a copper-zinc-tin-sulfur (CZTS) thin film solar cell, a preparation method therefor, and the use thereof. The present invention discloses two types of simple metal complexes which are capable of formulating a high-quality precursor solution.

A transparent electroconductive layer 3 includes a first main surface 5 and a second main surface 6 facing each other in a thickness direction. The transparent electroconductive layer 3 is a single layer extending in a plane direction perpendicular to the thickness direction. The transparent electroconductive layer 3 has a plurality of crystal grains 4, a plurality of first grain boundaries 7 partitioning the plurality of crystal grains 4 and having each of one end edge 9 and another end edge 10 in the thickness direction open in each of the first main surface 5 and the second main surface 6, and a second grain boundary 8 branching from a first intermediate portion 11 of one first grain boundary 7A and reaching a second intermediate portion 12 of another first grain boundary 7B.

A ceramic sputtering target, wherein when a cross-sectional structure of a sputtering surface is observed with an electron microscope, an amount of microcracks defined below is 50 μm/mm or less, and after performing a peel test on the sputtering surface, an area ratio of peeled particles confirmed by observing the cross-sectional structure with an electron microscope is 1.0% or less.

Amount of microcracks=frequency of microcracks×average depth of microcracks

A metal oxide film including a crystal part and having highly stable physical properties is provided. The size of the crystal part is less than or equal to 10 nm, which allows the observation of circumferentially arranged spots in a nanobeam electron diffraction pattern of the cross section of the metal oxide film when the measurement area is greater than or equal to 5 nmφ and less than or equal to 10 nmφ.

The present invention relates to an electromagnetically transparent metallic-luster member including a base and a metal layer formed over the base, wherein the metal layer includes a plurality of portions which are at least partly discontinuous and separate from each other, the metal layer includes a portion including aluminum element and a portion including indium element, the portion including indium element localizes in the metal layer, and a volume content (vol %) of the portion including indium element in the metal layer is 5-40 vol %.

Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to forming multi-depth films for the fabrication of optical devices. One embodiment includes disposing a base layer of a device material on a surface of a substrate. One or more mandrels of the device material are disposed on the base layer. The disposing the one or more mandrels includes positioning a mask over of the base layer. The device material is deposited with the mask positioned over the base layer to form an optical device having the base layer with a base layer depth and the one or more mandrels having a first mandrel depth and a second mandrel depth.

In a semiconductor device in which a channel formation region is included in an oxide semiconductor layer, an oxide insulating film below and in contact with the oxide semiconductor layer and a gate insulating film over and in contact with the oxide semiconductor layer are used to supply oxygen of the gate insulating film, which is introduced by an ion implantation method, to the oxide semiconductor layer.

Various embodiments herein relate to electrochromic devices, methods of fabricating electrochromic devices, and apparatus for fabricating electrochromic devices. In a number of cases, the electrochromic device may be fabricated to include a particular counter electrode material. The counter electrode material may include a base anodically coloring material. The counter electrode material may further include one or more halogens. The counter electrode material may also include one or more additives.