Morphological and optical properties of tin oxide nanomaterial thin film deposited using vacuum evaporation

Abstract

A 250 nm thick pure tin film was deposited on quartz substrates by vacuum evaporation of 99.9% pure tin metal. The films were heated in a two-step annealing sequence for 3 h at 200 and 3 h at 400°C with an electric furnace to decrease their surface roughness. This process transformed the films into tin(II) oxide. Subsequently, the films were annealed at five temperatures for 3 h each: 600, 700, 800, 900 and 1000°C. The crystal structure of the film on the quartz substrate was completely transformed into SnO 2 at 600°C. With the increase of annealing temperature to 1000°C, the size of the lattices appeared to decrease on the thin film. In addition, the annealing process led to the formation of pores on the surface, but the number of pores and the lattices volume decreased with increased annealing temperature. The optical properties of the thin film were characterized by the use of visible spectrophotometry which showed a high refractive index at around 2.082.27. Interestingly, the SnO 2 thin film with the highest refractive index at 2.27, which was obtained at 1000°C, exhibited the lowest Urbach energy. Therefore, the SnO 2 thin film has a high potential for optical applications, especially in dielectric waveguides and solar cells.

Tin instead of aluminum as a back electrode in P3HT:PC71BM organic solar cells

“…This is because thermal annealing was carried out at the lowtemperature range of RT-180 °C and, additionally, under a nitrogen atmosphere in an advanced glove box filled with high-purity (99.99%) N 2 gas, under control of the oxygen and moisture percentage inside the glove box. Khoiro et al 31) stated that SnO can be formed by thermal annealing of pure Sn film in the ambient atmosphere at 400 °C, while SnO 2 can be formed by thermal annealing of pure Sn film in the ambient atmosphere at 600 °C.…”

Dispersion stability of tin(IV) oxide nanoparticles in polar solvents and water aided by ultrasonication

“…[18][19][20] Besides, SnO 2 is found to have high third order optical nonlinearity, 21) making it suitable also for optoelectronics applications such as LEDs, optical logic gates and saturable absorber in Q-switching of fiber laser. [22][23][24][25] For better control and tailor-making its optical and electrical properties for the above-mentioned applications, SnO 2 NPs should have a small grain size with large surface area, which is critical for improved surface functionalization. For this purpose, SnO 2 is usually dispersed in a liquid medium to prevent agglomeration and made into thin films 26,27) -an interface suited for many other potential applications such as flexible and printed electronics.…”

A review on tin dioxide gas sensor: The role of the metal oxide doping, nanoparticles, and operating temperatures

“…[38]. It was prepared by several techniques such as sol-gel, microwave-assisted and ultrasound-assisted methods, solvothermal, pulsed laser deposition, solid-state reaction, microemulsion, hydrothermal deposition, electron beam evaporation, sonochemical, sputtering, spray pyrolysis, sonication, vapor-liquid-solid synthesis [26,29,[39][40][41][42][43][44][45]. It is an inorganic compound with a density of 6.99 g/cm 3 , and the melting point is 1624.85 C [46].…”