Deep understanding in physical and electrochemical performance of WO3–TiO2 nanocomposite thin films deposited onto ITO and FTO coated glass substrates using a thermionic vacuum arc deposition system

Abstract

In this work, WO3–TiO2 nanocomposite thin films were deposited via thermonic vacuum arc technique and the physical and electrochemical features of these nanocomposites were investigated. The average transmittance values were obtained 66.9% and 58.7%, particularly the mean absorbance values were 0.49 and 0.59 onto ITO and FTOcoated glass substrate. The optical band gap of the layers were calculated 2.59 and 2.62 eV upon ITO and FTO coated glass substrates, respectively. Measurement outputs show that both coated thin films are conductive and good storage capabilities for Li+ ions. The reversibility of the films is calculated at 7% and 15% on ITO coated glass and FTO coated glass substrates, respectively. Considering that WO3 and TiO2 materials separately show high quality electrochromic properties, it is aimed to produce these two materials as composites and to examine their electrochromic properties using different producing techniques.