## 2 Materials and Methods  
Thin films of Cu-Cr-Zr were deposited on alkali-free glass substrates by direct current (DC) magnetron sputtering. Prior to deposition, the substrates were first cleaned for 10 min by ultrasonication with deionized water and isopropanol, respectively. The distance between the targets and substrates was set to be 10 cm. The base pressure in the vacuum chamber was 5 \(\times\) 10\({}^{-4}\) Pa; the sputtering power was set at different levels (50 W, 150 W), as well as the argon (Ar) working pressure (2 mTorr and 20 mTorr), which aimed to evaluate the effect of sputtering power and sputtering pressure on the electronic resistivity and adhesion strength by combining experimental parameters with Minitab software, so as to find the optimal parameters for the deposition of thin films. No intentional cooling or heating of the substrates was provided during the deposition. After the deposition, the film thickness was determined by a Veeco Dektak 150 probe surface profiler. The thickness was then fixed at 200 nm, which was controlled by the deposition time under different sputter rates. The sheet resistance was measured by using a four-point probe. Furthermore, the resistance was calculated by the following formula:  
\[\rho=R_{s}\times\mathrm{t} \tag{1}\]  
where \(\rho\), \(R_{s}\), and \(\mathrm{t}\) are defined as the specific resistance, the film sheet resistance, and the film thickness, respectively. Different substrates were carried out in the same way. The sputter power and sputter pressure was fixed at 150 W and 2 mTorr, respectively. The Ar flow was fixed at 25 sccm. Table 1 shows the detailed parameters of these substrates:  
The thin film adhesion strength was measured by means of the standard test methods for measuring adhesion (i.e., American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) D3359) [26] with the pressure-sensitive tape, and then classified as one of six grades (5B, 4B, 3B, 2B, 1B, and 0B) according to the area percentage of the removal of coating from the substrate after scratching. 5B indicates no coating removal, indicating optimal adhesion. Table 2 shows the classification of adhesion test results.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Substrates** & **Sputtering Mode** & **Sputtering Power (W)** & **Ar Pressure (mTorr)** & **Thickness (Å)** \\ \hline Glass & & & & \\ Al\({}_{2}\)O\({}_{3}\)/Glass & RF & 120 & 1 & 300 \\ SiO\({}_{2}\)/Glass & RF & 80 & 1 & 250 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 1: Substrate parameters.  
The annealing process was conducted in a vacuum annealing furnace with the protection of Ar atmosphere. The Ar flow was set to 110 sccm; the annealing pressure was set to 1 Torr; the annealing time was set to 1 h; the annealing temperatures were set to 300 \({}^{\circ}\)C, 350 \({}^{\circ}\)C, 400 \({}^{\circ}\)C, and 450 \({}^{\circ}\)C. The crystalline structure of thin films was determined by X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurement using Cu K\(\alpha\)l radiation (\(\lambda\) = 0.15418 nm). XRD measurement was performed by an Empyrean Nano edition (PANalytical, Almelo, The Netherlands). The chemical changes in the surface of the films were detected by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements. XPS measurement was performed by an ESCALAB250 Xi (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA, USA) at a basic pressure of 7.5 \(\times\) 10\({}^{-10}\) Torr SEM measurement was performed by a Nova Nano SEM (FEI, Hillsboro, OR, USA).