study of annealing temperatures on electrical conductivity and optical properties of nanostructure ITO film as deposited by ion assisted e-beam evaporation

Abstract

In this research, the electrical and optical properties of nanostructured Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) films were investigated.  The ITO films were deposited by ion assisted e-beam evaporation with the glancing angle deposition (GLAD) technique on commercial ITO substrates, followed by annealing treatment. The results of crystal structure showed that the nanostructured ITO films are polycrystalline and cubic bixbyite structure (222). The sheet resistance and average transmission at the visible region were 12.17 W sq−1 and 89 %, respectively. The films presented the lowest resistivity and good transparency, where the sheet resistance and an average transmittance were 11.21 W sq−1 and 91% after annealing. The omnidirectional characteristics for a wide range of incident angle (0 − 80°) of nanostructured ITO film which was annealed at 300 °C had higher optical transmission than films without annealing. This work eventually proved that the plasma treatments have effectively promoted the performance of the dye-sensitized solar cells and confirmed their potentials in the real-world applications.