Influence of annealing temperature on structural properties of ITO thin-films on graphite substrate

In various industrial applications including thin-film solar cells indium tin oxide (ITO) is widely used. In this research work highly electrically conductive Tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) was deposited on graphite substrate using e-beam evaporator at substrate temperature 300 degrees C and 400 degrees C. Thermal treatment of the deposited ITO thin film was further done with the temperature values up to 900 degrees C. ITO nanostructures were found to be grown at 400 degrees C with diameters of 30-35 nm and remained stable even at 800 degrees C. At 900 degrees C, the ITO characteristics were observed to change. The In and Sn concentrations were decreased, while carbon (C) and oxygen (02) were found to be increased at 900 C. The increase in 02 was observed to be 54% while the concentration of C increased from 15% to 45%. Optical and FE-SEM characterization were done to study the morphology and surface roughness of ITO thin-films. TEM and XRD was used to study the crystallinity of these ITO nanostructures. Similarly, X-Ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was used to measure the components and the chemical state. Depth profiling was measured using secondary-ion-mass-spectroscopy (SIMS) of these thin films on graphite substrate at different annealed temperatures upto 900 degrees C. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.