Indium tin oxide (ITO) thin film fabricated by indium-tin-organic sol including ITO nanoparticle

In this paper, indium tin oxide (ITO) thin film was fabricated by indium-tin-organic sol including ITO nanoparticle, and optical transmittance was characterized. ITO nanoparticle was designed to dope 10 wt.% SnO₂ into In₂O₃ lattice, and was synthesized under low temperature not exceeding 300 °C in order to make ultrafine sized particle. As a result, the synthesized ITO nanoparticle showed ultrafine size about 5 nm and high specific surface area of 117 m²/g. Also, (2 2 2) preferred orientation was observed from X-ray diffracted peak. Then, using the particles and indium-tin-organic sol, ITO thin film was fabricated. The indium-tin-organic sol was made using organic solution in which indium and tin acetic reagents were dissolved into an organic solvent. The ITO nanoparticle was included into indium-tin-organic sol in order to deposit ITO sol thin film by spin coating. The ITO mixture sol was spin-coated on a glass substrate of which area was 7 × 7 cm, and heat-treated at 500 °C. As a result, the optimized ITO sol-gel thin film could be successfully fabricated with good optical transmittance over 83% and electrical resistance less than 7 × 10³ Ω by including the 0.6 wt.% ITO nanoparticle into the ITO sol.