Fabrication of ITO particles using a combination of a homogeneous precipitation method and a seeding technique and their electrical conductivity

The present work proposes a method to fabricate indium tin oxide (ITO) particles using precursor particles synthesized with a combination of a homogeneous precipitation method and a seeding technique, and it also describes their electronic conductivity properties. Seed nanoparticles were produced using a co-precipitation method with aqueous solutions of indium (III) chloride, tin (IV) chloride aqueous solution and sodium hydroxide. Three types of ITO nanoparticles were fabricated. The first type was fabricated using the co-precipitation method (c-ITO). The second and third types were fabricated using a homogeneous precipitation method with the seed nanoparticles (s-ITO) and without seeds (n-ITO). The as-prepared precursor particles were annealed in air at 500 °C, and their crystal structures were cubic ITO. The c-ITO nanoparticles formed irregular-shaped agglomerates of nanoparticles. The n-ITO nanoparticles had a rectangular-parallelepiped or quasi-cubic structure. Most s-ITO nanoparticles had a quasi-cubic structure, and their size was larger than the n-ITO particles. The volume resistivities of the c-ITO, n-ITO and s-ITO powders decreased in that order because the regular-shaped particles were made to strongly contact with each other.