Preparation and characterization of indium doped tin oxide (ITO) via a non-aqueous sol-gel

Abstract

ABSTRACTTin-doped indium oxide (ITO) nanoparticles (NPs) were conceived as promising materials using as noncarbon support for Pt NPs on the cathode side of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC). In this paper, ITO nanoparticles have been synthesized via a nonaqueous sol-gel process using indium acetylacetonate and tin bis(acetylacetonate)dichloride in oleyamine as starting materials. The ITO exhibits solid solution phase, relatively porous, good crystallinity with a uniform size of 15–20 nm, resulting in a high specific surface area and excellent conductivity. The effects of reaction temperature, calcination temperature on the specific surface area as well as the conductivity of ITO nanoparticles were studied in this paper. We found that the ITO nanoparticles synthesized at 235°C and calcination temperature at 500°C for 3 hours shows the excellent conductivity of 1.242 S/cm, was significantly ∼8-fold higher than that of commercial ITO produced by Sigma-Aldrich (0.15 S/cm). The results of this research suggested that the ITO synthesized by non-aqueous sol-gel process exhibits relatively good properties as well as can apply this process to prepare the others nanomaterial support based on In2O3-materials by doping different oxide into indium oxide.