The Preparation Of ITO Nano-powder At Low Temperature

Transparent conductive oxide (TCO) film plays an important role in pholoelectron industry. There are many kinds of transparent conductive oxide. The main transparent conductive oxide include indium tin oxide (ITO), Al-doped ZnO (AZO), tin antimony oxide (ATO) etc.ITO is important material of making the transparent electrode. ITO has both high conductivity and high optical transmittance. The subst-itutional oxygen vacancies and tin contributing to its high conductivity. The high optical transmittance of ITO films is a direct consequence ofit being a wide band gap (Eg>3eV) .Due to its excellent electro-optical properties such as high electrical conductivity, transparency to light, high substrate adherence, good hardness, and chemical inertness the applications in various fields: transparent electrodes for display devices, transparent coatings for solar energy heat mirrors, windows films etc.Among all of the investigations on ITO, the research on its thin films has been the most interesting issue for several decades. To satisfy the requirements of the wide applications of ITO thin films, a lot of research efforts have been made on the preparation of ITO films, and various manufacturing techniques such as evaporation, reactive electron evaporation D. C. and R. F. magnetron sputtering reactive thermal deposition and sol-gel process have been successfully developed.Our country has much metal of Indium and tin, but the ITO was mainly imported. Therefore, it is critical that we must change the position of importing ITO in high price and exporting material in low price.In this work, the ITO nanometer powders were tried to be prepared by the hydrothermal method.Mere, we report a very simple technique for the preparation of ITO nano-particles at a temperature as low as 300 C. The method was improved based on the hydrothermal method. Put the precursor (indium-tin-hydroxide) into a stainless steel autoclave filled of Ar and heat the autoclave at the temperature of 300 C and pressure of 2 MPa for 3 hours. ITO nano-paticles was prepared. The shape, particle size and crystallize condition of ITO nano-paticles were analyzed by XRD and TEM. Compared this method with the past, the circumstance of preparation is much softer. It has the very important meaning in the industry field.