Effect of intermittent time on structural, optoelectronic, luminescence properties of sprayed antimony doped tin oxide thin films

• ATO thin films are synthesized by spray pyrolysis method.
• Effect of intermittent time on physical properties is studied.
• The highest figure of merit is obtained as 23.95 × 10−3 Ω−1.
• Oxygen vacancies are dominated for the emission of blue–green light.

By implementing spray pyrolysis technique the influence of intermittent time on to the structural, optical and electrical properties of the antimony doped tin oxide (ATO) thin films were analyzed. It is seen that all the films exhibit tetragonal crystal structure with a preferential growth along the (2 1 1) and (3 0 1) planes. The crystallite size of the film estimated from the XRD pattern decreases with increase in intermittent time. The pyramidal crystallites formed due to coalescence are observed from SEM images. The average optical transmittance in the visible range is 75%. The calculated IR reflectivity was found to be in the range of 92–97%. For the typical film deposited with 15 s intermittent time, the values of sheet resistance and resistivity of about 3.12 Ω/▯ and 4.2 × 10−4 Ω cm, respectively. The films deposited with 15 s intermittent time has higher φ (23.95 × 10−3 Ω−1) than the values of φ reported in literature for ATO films prepared by spray pyrolysis technique. All the above mentioned properties of the ATO films deposited by spray pyrolysis technique are useful for the production of low-cost, large area coatings of ATO films.