A balancing between super transparency and conductivity of solution combustion derived titanium doped indium oxide: Effect of charge carrier density and mobility

In this contribution, super transparent (~100%) and conducting In14Ti1O23 (Titanium doped Indium oxide; InTiO) films were reported via solution combustion processing with acetylacetone as fuel. Both bulk-powder and thin film systems were studied and revealed the efficacy of low temperature combustion synthesis which yielded crystalline InTiO powder at 150 °C and its film counterpart had shown pronounced crystalinity with temperature. Also, all films with varying annealing temperature were smooth with rms value ranging from 0.29 nm to 1.9 nm. In addition, the charge carrier density in all films found to be of the order 1019 cm−3, possessing highest transparency nearly equals to uncoated glass at an annealing temperature of 350 °C having maximum of ~67% metal-oxygen-metal framework (or lattice oxygen) confirmed via X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Also, the highest conductivity of 20 S/cm at an annealing temperature of 450 °C clearly conveyed the potential of solution combustion processing in the fabrication of ultra-transparent InTiO films with no sophistication in the film fabrication.