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

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 Omega cm) shows a core-shell structure with the shell thickness of similar to 18 nm and the ATO average nanoparticle size of 9.63 nm. Finally, a possible formation mechanism of the composite was proposed.