The effect of sputtering pressure on structural, optical and electrical properties of indium tin oxide nanocolumns prepared by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering

• The sputtering pressure was varied for each sample at 3, 5 and 10 mTorr.
• At low sputtering pressure, the compactness and density of grains are increased.
• All the samples showed densely packed nanocolumns array.
• At low sputtering pressure shows the strongest XRD peak of (4 0 0) orientation.
• The average transmittance was greater than 80% in the visible wavelength range.

In the present study, transparent conductive indium tin oxide (ITO) nanocolumns are successfully deposited on glass and silicon substrates by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering system. The effects of sputtering pressure on the morphological, structural, electrical and optical properties of the ITO nanocolumns were investigated. Dense nanocolumns array are obtained at low sputtering pressure. The (400) peaks become more intense at low sputtering pressure, which indicates the improvement in the crystallinity of the ITO nanocolumns. The lowest resistivity of 9.36 × 10−5 Ω cm was obtained for the ITO nanocolumns deposited at sputtering pressure of 3 mTorr. The average of optical transparency greater than 80% in the visible range of 470 nm was obtained from all samples investigated, give a good potential for blue light emitting diode (LED) applications. The low resistivity and high transparencies give a superior properties as a transparent conducting layer in various optoelectronic devices comparable with that conventional ITO conducting layer.

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