Highly transparent and conductive indium tin oxide thin films for solar cells grown by reactive thermal evaporation at low temperature

Transparent conductive tin-doped indium oxide (In2O3:Sn, ITO) thin films with various Sn-doping concentrations have been prepared using the low cost reactive thermal evaporation (RTE) technique at a low growth temperature of ~160 °C. The structural characteristics, optical and electrical properties of the ITO thin films were investigated. These polycrystalline ITO films exhibited preferential orientation along (222) plane and possessed low resistivities ranging from 3.51 to 5.71 × 10−4 Ω cm. The decreased mobility was attributed to the scattering by ionized and neutral impurities at high doping concentrations. The optimized ITO thin film deposited with 6.0 wt% Sn-doping concentration exhibited a high average transparency of 87 % in the wavelength range of 380–900 nm and a low resistivity of 3.74 × 10−4 Ω cm with a high Hall mobility of 47 cm2 V−1s−1. A hydrogenated amorphous silicon and silicon–germanium (a-Si:H/a-SiGe:H) double-junction solar cell fabricated with the RTE-grown ITO electrodes presented a conversion efficiency of 10.51 %.