Electrical, structural, photoluminescence and optical properties of p-type conducting, antimony-doped SnO2 thin films

P-type transparent conducting antimony-doped tin oxide (ATO) films were successfully fabricated on quartz glass substrates by radio-frequency magnetron sputtering using a 20 mol.% Sb-doped SnO2 ceramic target. The deposited films were annealed at different temperatures for different durations. Hall effect results indicated that 973 K was the optimum annealing temperature to get p-type ATO films with the highest hole concentration (5.83 × 1019 cm–3). X-ray diffraction studies indicated that the preferred (1 0 1) orientation favored the formation of p-type conducting films. Photoluminescence spectra showed an intense UV luminescence peak near 362 nm resulting from the band-edge exciton transition observed for p-type ATO films. UV–visible transmission spectra showed that p-type ATO films had high transparence. In addition, p-type conductivity was also confirmed by the non-linear characteristics of a p-type ATO/n-type ATO structure; the diode structure has an optical transmission of ∼60–85% in the visible light range.