Indium oxide co-doped with tin and zinc: A simple route to highly conducting high density targets for TCO thin-film fabrication

摘要

Indium oxide co-doped with tin and zinc (ITZO) ceramics have been successfully prepared by direct sintering of the powders mixture at 1300 °C This allowed us to easily fabricate large highly dense target suitable for sputtering transparent conducting oxide (TCO) films, without using any cold or hot pressing techniques. Hence, the optimized ITZO ceramic reaches a high relative bulk density (~ 92% of In_2O_3 theoretical density) and higher than the well-known indium oxide doped with tin (ITO) prepared under similar conditions. All X-ray diagrams obtained for ITZO ceramics confirms a bixbyte structure typical for In_2O_3 only. This indicates a higher solubility limit of Sn and Zn when they are co-doped into In_2O_3 forming a solid-solution. A very low value of electrical resistivity is obtained for [In_2O_3:Sn_(0.10)]:Zn_(0.10) (1.7 x 10~(-3) Ω cm, lower than ITO counterpart) which could be fabricated to high dense ceramic target suing pressure-less sintering.