Surface morphology, structural and electrical properties of RF-sputtered ITO thin films on Si substrates

Abstract

Series of indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films were deposited onto Si(100) substrate by RF sputtering. The film thickness ranges from 61 to 768 nm. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) experiments were performed to study the structure and the surface morphology of these films. The electrical properties were obtained by a Hall effect measurement system; the electrical resistivity ρ, the carrier concentration n and the mobility μ were measured. Annealing experiments were carried out in the air at 400 • C for 60 min. The different physical parameters were investigated as a function of thickness before and after annealing. The effects of power and deposition rate were also addressed. We noted that the behaviour of some parameters with thickness is different before and after annealing. All these results are discussed and correlated in this article. Also, the results of the present ITO/Si system were compared to those of the ITO/glass, we have previously published.

Influence of Substrate Orientation and Oxygen Partial Pressure on the Morphology, Structure, and Electrical Property of Epitaxial Indium Tin Oxide Films

“…It means that the crystal orientations will affect the electrical properties of ITO films. But in most of the previous studies, changes in preferred crystal orientations often went along with the changes of deposition conditions, such as oxygen partial pressure, , deposition time, , thermally treated temperature, , precursor flow rates, Sn concentration, sputtering power, deposition angles, and deposition rates, and so on. In order to eliminate the influence of preparation conditions and clarify the correlations between crystalline orientation and electrical properties, in this work, the epitaxial ITO thin films along the different crystal orientations were deposited on low-index YSZ substrates by direct current (DC) magnetron sputtering.…”