Atomistic aspects of carrier concentration variation in post-annealed indium tin oxide films

Abstract

Post-annealing environment-dependent optical and electrical properties of indium tin oxide films grown on glass were examined. X-ray diffraction measurements revealed that all of the films exhibited poly-crystallinity after annealing at 400 °C for 10 min O2, in-air and N2. The optical property measurements yielded >80% transmittances for all the films except for the as-grown and O2-annealed films, even though there were no significant optical band-gap energy differences. In the Hall measurements, all of the films exhibited n-type characteristics. However, the film annealed under the N2 environment showed the best electrical properties (highest carrier concentration and conductivity). The physical origin of electrical property variations due to annealing environment differences was explained by examining the core-level x-ray photoelectron spectra.