We review work on In2O3:Sn films prepared by reactive e‐beam evaporation of In2O3 with up to 9 mol % SnO2 onto heated glass. These films have excellent spectrally selective properties when the deposition rate is ∼0.2 nm/s, the substrate temperature is ≳150 °C, and the oxygen pressure is ∼5×10−4 Torr. Optimized coatings have crystallite dimensions ≳50 nm and a C‐type rare‐earth oxide structure. We cover electromagnetic properties as recorded by spectrophotometry in the 0.2–50‐μm range, by X‐band microwave reflectance, and by dc electrical measurements. Hall‐effect data are included. An increase of the Sn content is shown to have several important effects: the semiconductor band gap is shifted towards the ultraviolet, the luminous transmittance remains high, the infrared reflectance increases to a high value beyond a certain wavelength which shifts towards the visible, phonon‐induced infrared absorption bands vanish, the microwave reflectance goes up, and the dc resisitivity drops to ∼2×10−4 Ω cm. The corre...

Evaporated Sn‐doped In2O3 films: Basic optical properties and applications to energy‐efficient windows

The present status and prospects for further development of polycrystalline or amorphous transparent conducting oxide (TCO) semiconductors used for practical thin-film transparent electrode applications are presented in this paper. The important TCO semiconductors are impurity-doped ZnO, In2O3 and SnO2 as well as multicomponent oxides consisting of combinations of ZnO, In2O3 and SnO2, including some ternary compounds existing in their systems. Development of these and other TCO semiconductors is important because the expanding need for transparent electrodes for optoelectronic device applications is jeopardizing the availability of indium-tin-oxide (ITO), whose main constituent, indium, is a very expensive and scarce material. Al- and Ga-doped ZnO (AZO and GZO) semiconductors are promising as alternatives to ITO for thin-film transparent electrode applications. In particular, AZO thin films, with a low resistivity of the order of 10−5 Ω cm and source materials that are inexpensive and non-toxic, are the best candidates. However, further development of the deposition techniques, such as magnetron sputtering or vacuum arc plasma evaporation, as well as of the targets is required to enable the preparation of AZO and GZO films on large area substrates with a high deposition rate.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0268-1242/20/4/004/pdf

Transparent conducting oxide semiconductors for transparent electrodes

Most research to develop highly transparent and conductive thin films has focused on n-type semiconductors consisting of metal oxides. Historically, transparent conducting oxide (TCO) thin films composed of binary compounds such as SnO2 and In2O3 were developed by means of chemical- and physical-deposition methods. Impurity-doped SnO2 (Sb- or F-doped SnO2, e.g., SnO2:Sb or SnO2: F) and In2O3: Sn (indium tin oxide, ITO) films are in practical use. In addition to binary compounds, ternary compounds such as Cd2SnO4, CdSnO3, and CdIn2O4 were developed prior to 1980, but their TCO films have not yet been used widely.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0883769400027159

New n-Type Transparent Conducting Oxides

Present status of transparent conducting oxide thin-film development for Indium-Tin-Oxide (ITO) substitutes

ZnO:Al coatings were prepared by rf magnetron sputtering of ZnO together with dc magnetron sputtering of Al onto rapidly revolving unheated substrates under weakly oxidizing conditions. Optimized films had ∼1% luminous absorptance, ∼85% thermal infrared reflectance, and ∼5×10−4 Ω cm electrical resistivity at a thickness of ∼0.3 μm. The Al content was ≲2 at. %, as determined by Rutherford backscattering spectrometry. Transmission electron microscopy and electron diffraction showed ∼50‐nm average crystallite size and a hexagonal wurtzite structure. Spectrophotometric transmittance and reflectance were recorded in the 0.2–50‐μm wavelength interval, and the complex dielectric function was evaluated by computation. The optical data were explained from an effective mass model for n‐doped semiconductors. The Al atoms are singly ionized, and the associated electrons occupy the bottom of the conduction band as free‐electron gas. The Al ions act as pointlike Coulomb scatterers and are screened by the electrons acco...

Optical properties of sputter-deposited ZnO:Al thin films

Zinc oxide films were prepared on unheated glass substrates by rf magnetron sputtering under an applied external dc magnetic field in pure argon gas, and electrical and optical properties of the deposited films were investigated. Highly transparent films with resistivity as low as 10−4 Ω cm, which were weakly oriented perpendicular to the substrate surface(c‐axis orientation), could be produced with a relatively high deposition rate on the substrate suspended perpendicular to the target surface by controlling the sputtering gas pressure and the external dc magnetic field, without any postdeposition preparative treatment. The Hall mobility of the film with the highest conductivity was about 120 cm2/V sec, which was the highest yet reported for thin films on ZnO. The increase in the conductivity was related to the increase in Hall mobility which was caused by the decrease of carrier scattering from grain boundaries due to the grain growth resulting from the improvement of crystallization. The improvement of...

S. Shooji

Papers

Electrical and optical properties of zinc oxide thin films prepared by rf magnetron sputtering for transparent electrode applications

The stability of zinc oxide transparent electrodes fabricated by R.F. magnetron sputtering