Optical and electrical properties of crystalline indium tin oxide thin film deposited by vacuum evaporation technique

Abstract

Indium tin oxide (ITO) thin film was deposited on glass substrate by means of vacuum evaporation technique and annealed at 200 °C, 300 °C and 400 °C in air for 1 h. The characterization and properties of the deposited film samples were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and UV-VIS-NIR spectroscopy techniques. From the XRD patterns, it was found that the deposited thin film was of crystalline at an annealing temperature of 400 °C. The crystalline phase was indexed as cubic structure with lattice constant and crystallite size of 0.511 nm and 40 nm, respectively. The SEM images showed that the films exhibited uniform surface morphology with well-defined spherical grains. The optical transmittance of ITO thin film annealed at 400 °C was improved from 44% to 84% in the wavelength range from 250 nm to 2 100 nm and an optical band gap was measured as 3.86 eV. Hall effect measurement was used to measure the resistivity and conductivity of the prepared film.