Synthesis and electrical properties of antimony–doped tin oxide–coated TiO2 by polymeric precursor method

Abstract

Antimony–doped tin oxide–coated TiO2 (TiO2@SbxSn1-xO2 or TiO2@ATO) composite was fabricated by a facile polymeric precursor (Pechini) method, with the percent yield up to 90%. Different doping amount of antimony was used to investigate the effect on conductivity of the TiO2@ATO composite. Various characterization methods including XRD, SEM, HRTEM, XPS, UV–vis, FTIR and TG–DSC, have been applied to get deep insights into the structure, morphology and the enhanced conductivity. The composite with the lowest resistivity (4.2 Ω cm) shows a core–shell structure with the shell thickness of ∼18 nm and the ATO average nanoparticle size of 9.63 nm. Finally, a possible formation mechanism of the composite was proposed.