Development of low temperature stoichiometric solution combustion derived transparent conductive ternary zinc tin co-doped indium oxide electrodes

Abstract

Here, the development of transparent conductive zinc tin co-doped indium oxide (IZTO: In<inf>1.4</inf>Sn<inf>0.3</inf>Zn<inf>0.3</inf>O<inf>3</inf>) ternary electrodes is addressed through low temperature solution combustion processing. Optimization of fuel to oxidizer ratio offers low temperature (?130 °C) of combustion with balanced redox reaction. The thin films of IZTO annealed at different temperatures showed a decreasing trend in the resistivity with a fixed order of 10-2 ? cm and the film with a highest Hall mobility of 5.92 cm2 V-1 s-1 resulted at 400 °C. All the films with different temperatures of annealing were smooth (rms ? 2.42 nm) in nature and the IZTO film annealed at 200 °C is 83% transparent in the visible spectra. The effective band gap of 0.9 eV determined from first-principles density functional theory gives clear evidence for the conducting nature of IZTO. The thin film transistor fabricated with IZTO as a gate electrode with poly(methyl methacrylate) and pentacene as the dielectric and channel material, respectively, exhibited a saturation mobility of 0.44 cm2 V-1 s-1 and I<inf>on</inf>/I<inf>off</inf> ratio of 103. Further, the printability of the IZTO combustible precursor is established which resulted in anti-edge deposition of the printed feature. © 2017 The Royal Society of Chemistry.