Highly conducting transparent indium tin oxide films prepared by pulsed laser deposition

Abstract In 2 O 3 doped with 5 wt.% SnO 2 [indium-tin oxide (ITO) (5 wt.%)] films were deposited on glass substrates by pulsed laser deposition using an ArF laser (λ=193 nm). In all experiments, repetition rates of 1∼50 Hz, an energy density of 6 J/cm 2 , and an ablation time of 30–900 s were used. A lowest resistivity of 8.45×10 −5 Ω cm and an optical transmittance of more than 80% in the visible range of the spectrum were obtained for ITO (5 wt.%) films of approximately 300-nm-thickness fabricated at a substrate temperature of 400 °C and oxygen pressure of 10 Pa. Smooth surfaces with an average surface roughness of 1.26 nm were observed by field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM).