Room temperature deposited aluminium-doped zinc oxide thin films on glass substrate, using pulsed-DC magnetron sputtering, have shown high optical transmittance and low electrical resistivity with high uniformity of its spatial distribution after they were exposed to a rapid thermal annealing process at 400 °C under N 2 H 2 atmosphere. It is particularly interesting to note that such an annealing process of AZO thin films for only 30 s was sufficient, on one hand to improve their optical transmittance from 73% to 86%, on the other hand to both decrease their resistivity from 1.7 × 10 −3 Ω cm to 5.1 × 10 −4 Ω cm and achieve the highest uniformity spatial distribution. To understand the mechanisms behind such improvements of the optoelectronic properties, electrical, optical, structural and morphological changes as a function of annealing time have been investigated by using hall measurement, UV–visible spectrometry, X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscope imaging, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]