High-quality Al-doped zinc oxide (AZO) thin films have been deposited on quartz substrates by radio-frequency magnetron sputtering at room temperature for thin film solar cell applications as transparent conductive oxide (TCO) electrode layers. Effects of post-deposition annealing treatment in pure nitrogen and nitrogen/hydrogen atmosphere have been investigated. Annealing treatments were carried out from 300 degrees C to 600 degrees C for compatibility with typical optoelectronic device fabrication processes. A series of characterization techniques, including X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, Hall, optical transmission, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy has been employed to study these AZO materials. It was found that there were significant changes in crystallinity of the films, resistivity increased from 4.60 x 10(-4) to 4.66 x 10(-3) Omega cm and carrier concentration decreased from 8.68 x 10(20) to 2.77 x 10(20) cm(-3) when annealing in 400 degrees C pure nitrogen. Whereas there were no significant changes in electrical and optical properties of the AZO films when annealing in 300-500 degrees C nitrogen/ hydrogen atmosphere, the electrical stability of the AZO films during the hydrogen treatment is attributed to both desorption of adsorbed oxygen from the grain boundaries and production of additional oxygen vacancies that act as donor centers in the films by removal of oxygen from the ZnO matrix. These results demonstrated that the AZO films are stably suited for TCO electrodes in display devices and solar cells. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.