Effect of particle composition on microstructure and resistivity of indium tin oxide targets

Abstract

Indium tin oxide (ITO) targets are generally prepared with single-size powders. Herein, we proposed a novel strategy to prepare high-quality ITO targets using binary-size particles in different particle count proportions. When the sintering temperature was 1550 ℃ and holding time was 10 h, the target prepared with 118&44 nm powders in particle count proportion of 1:5 showed the maximum relative density of 99.43% and minimum resistivity of 1.41 × 10-4 Ω·cm. We demonstrate that the excellent properties are attributed to the dense microstructure, which is formed by filling the internal gaps among large particles with small particles.