Studies On Conductive Nano-particles/ATO Transparent Conductive Films

Transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) are used extensively for a variety of applications including architectural windows, flat-panel displays, thin-film photovoltanics, smart windows, and polymer-based electronics. Although ITO films are widely used and show high transparency and conductivity at room temperature, the latter property is severely spoiled under high temperature. Sb doped tin oxide shows unique characteristics in chemical inertness, stability to heat treatment and mechanical hardness. In addition, sol-gel coated Sb doped tin oxide films have industrial advantages about deposition processes. While the conductivity of Sb doped tin oxide films still need to improve.In this work, we use conductive nano particle for preparation of nano particles incorporated Sb:SnO2 thin films by sol-gel process for the first time in order to improve the morphology and conductivity of the Sb:SnO2 films.Electric conductive tin oxide nano-particles have been made by hydrothermal crystallization method. The hydrothermal reaction condition, concentration of the precursor and pH value have been controlled for preparing tin oxide nano-particles. Tin Oxide nano particles were successfully prepared under 200 ℃, and can be evenly dispersed into water and ethanol, the size of the nano particle can be controlled smaller than 10nm.Tin Oxide nano particles were added into the antimony-doped tin oxide sol-gel dip coating solutions, and transparent conductive films were prepared from the solution by sol-gel dip coating method. The properties of the tin oxide nano-particles are investigated by TEM. The influence of incorporation of conductive nano particles on the electrical conductivity and optical transmission of Sb-doped tin oxide films were studied by Van Der Pauw method and by means of UV/VIS Spectrometer Lambda 20 and FTIR absorption spectroscopy. The morphology of the films was studied by AFM. The conductivity was improved and the porous films were densitified by the incorporation of the nano particles. The conductivity (resistance of 2.1 × 10-3 Ωcm) reached the best when the amount of tin oxide nano particles suspension was 10wt%. The transmittance in visible range of the ATO films with or without tin oxide particles is about 80%. After heat treatment the the SnO2 particles have incorporated into the film network.