Enhancement of the optical and electrical properties of ITO thin films deposited by electron beam evaporation technique

Physics Department, Faculty of Science, South Velley University, 82524 Sohag, Egypt

Corresponding author: hazem95@yahoo.com

Received: 10 September 2004
Revised: 28 February 2005
Accepted: 12 April 2005
Published online: 11 July 2005

Abstract

Indium tin oxide (ITO) is widely utilized in numerous industrial applications due to its unique combined properties of transparency to visible light and electrical conductivity. ITO films were deposited on glass substrates by an electron beam evaporation technique at room temperature from bulk samples, with different thicknesses. The film with 1500 Å thick was selected to perform annealing in the temperature range of 200–400 °C and annealing for varying times from 15 to 120 min at 400 °C. The X-ray diffraction of the films was analyzed in order to investigate its dependence on thickness, and annealing. Electrical and optical measurements were also carried out. Transmittance, optical energy gap, refractive index, carrier concentration, thermal emissivity and resistivity were investigated. It was found that the as-deposited films with different thicknesses were highly absorbing and have relatively poor electrical properties. The films become opaque with increasing the film thickness. After thermal annealing, the resistance decreases and a simultaneous variation in the optical transmission occurs. A transmittance value of 85.5% in the IR region and 82% in the visible region of the spectrum and a resistivity of 2.8 Cm were obtained at annealing temperature of 400 °C for 120 min.