Morphological differences in transparent conductive indium-doped zinc oxide thin films deposited by ultrasonic spray pyrolysis

•Indium-doped ZnO thin films were grown on glass using ultrasonic spray pyrolysis.•Thin films' orientations depend on In doping and Zn molarity of precursor solution.•Highly c-axis or a-axis orientations were found in the In-doped ZnO thin films.•In doping of 6–8 at.% may have resulted in ZnO and a metastable Zn7In2O10 phases.•Increasing precursor molarity reduced sheet resistance of In-doped ZnO thin films.

In-doped ZnO thin films were deposited on glass substrates by an ultrasonic spray pyrolysis technique, using indium chloride (InCl3) as a dopant and zinc acetate solution as a precursor. Increasing the [at.% In]/[at.% Zn] ratio changed the crystal orientations of thin films, from the (100) preferred orientation in the undoped, to the (101) and (001) preferred orientations in the In-doped ZnO thin films with 4 at.% and 6–8 at.%, respectively. Undoped ZnO thin film shows relatively smooth surface whereas In-doped ZnO thin films with 4 at.% and 6–8 at.% show surface features of pyramidal forms and hexagonal columns, respectively. X-ray diffraction patterns of the In-doped ZnO thin films with [at.% In]/[at.% Zn] ratios of 6–8% presented an additional peak located at 2-theta of 32.95°, which possibly suggested that a metastable Zn7In2O10 phase was present with the ZnO phase. ZnO thin films doped with 2 at.% In resulted in a sheet resistance of ~ 645 Ω/sq, the lowest value among thin films with [at.% In]/[at.% Zn] ratio in a range of 0–8%. The precursor molarity was changed between 0.05 M and 0.20 M at an [at.% In]/[at.% Zn] ratio of 2%. Increasing the precursor molarity in a range of 0.10 M–0.20 M resulted in In-doped ZnO thin films with the (100) preferred orientation. An In-doped ZnO thin film deposited by 0.20 M precursor showed a sheet resistance of 25 Ω/sq, and an optical transmission of 75% at 550 nm wavelength. The optical band gap estimated from the transmission result was 3.292 eV.