Electrical and optical properties of sb-doped sno2 thin films fabricated by pulsed laser deposition

We fabricated undoped and Sb-doped SnO₂ thin films on glass substrates by a pulsed laser deposition (PLD) process. Undoped and 2 - 8 wt% Sb₂O₃-doped SnO₂ targets with a high density level of ∼90% were prepared by the spark plasma sintering (SPS) process. Initially, the effects of the deposition temperature on undoped SnO₂ thin films were investigated in the region of 100 - 600°C. While the undoped SnO₂ film exhibited the lowest resistivity of 1.20 × 10 ^-2 ·cm at 200°C due to the highest carrier concentration generated by the oxygen vacancies, 2 wt% Sb-doped SnO₂ film exhibited the lowest resistivity value of 5.43 × 10^-3 ω·cm^-1, the highest average transmittance of 85.8%, and the highest figure of merit of 1202 ω^-1·cm-1 at 400 ₂ among all of the doped films. These results imply that 2 wt% Sb₂O₃ is an optimum doping content close to the solubility limit of Sb⁵⁺ substitution for the Sn4+ sites of SnO₂.