Development of low temperature stoichiometric solution combustion derived transparent conductive ternary zinc tin co-doped indium oxide electrodes

Abstract

Here, the development of transparent conductive zinc tin co-doped indium oxide (IZTO: In1.4Sn0.3Zn0.3O3) ternary electrodes is addressed through low temperature solution combustion processing. Optimization of fuel to oxidizer ratio offers low temperature (?130 C) of combustion with balanced redox reaction. The thin films of IZTO annealed at different temperatures showed a decreasing trend in the resistivity with a fixed order of 10-2 ? cm and the film with a highest Hall mobility of 5.92 cm2 V-1 s-1 resulted at 400 C. All the films with different temperatures of annealing were smooth (rms ? 2.42 nm) in nature and the IZTO film annealed at 200 C is 83% transparent in the visible spectra. The effective band gap of 0.9 eV determined from first-principles density functional theory gives clear evidence for the conducting nature of IZTO. The thin film transistor fabricated with IZTO as a gate electrode with poly(methyl methacrylate) and pentacene as the dielectric and channel material, respectively, exhibited a saturation mobility of 0.44 cm2 V-1 s-1 and Ion/Ioff ratio of 103. Further, the printability of the IZTO combustible precursor is established which resulted in anti-edge deposition of the printed feature. 2017 The Royal Society of Chemistry.