Tailoring the properties of tin dioxide thin films by spray pyrolysis technique

Abstract Nanostructured transparent conducting SnO2 thin films have been grown on glass substrates via an environmentally benign chemical route viz spray pyrolysis. All samples were grown for various concentrations of precursor solution with the substrate kept at 350 °C maintaining a spray rate of 10 mL/min. The characterizations revealed orthorhombic crystal structure with preferential growth in (112) plane for all samples. Ellipsometric analysis confirmed the good quality of the films. The sample prepared at 0.2 M concentration of precursor solution showed average transmission of 60% in the visible region with maximum conductivity of 24.86 S/cm. As synthesized samples exhibited overall Photoluminescence (PL) emission colours of green, greenish white and bluish white depending on the intensities of excitonic and oxygen vacancy defect level emissions.