Morphology and Electric Properties of Tin Oxide Composite Thin Films Prepared by Sol‐Gel Method

Abstract

Undoped and Cu doped SnO 2 thin films were fabricated by sol-gel method. The influence of annealing temperature, Cu doping and the addition of polyethyleneglycol (PEG)/glycerine on the film crystallinity, morphology and electrical properties were investigated. It is shown that annealing temperature can affect the film crystallization by controlling the crystallinity of the film and adhesion between the substrate and the films. Besides, both the Cu doping and PEG/glycerine addition can reduce the cracks quantity on the film. Cu doping can form Cu: SnO 2 solid solution which depress the onset of cracks. PEG/glycerine can increase the viscosity of solution which reduces the film drying speed, and thus provides more time for grain recombination and stress release. The conductivity of both the Cu: SnO 2 film and films added with PEG/glycerine improved comparing with pure SnO 2 film, which can be explained by the formation of oxygen vacancies induced by the Cu substitutional doping and the reduced amounts of cracks due to the additive of PEG/glycerine, respectively. This work may provide some useful information to optimize the SnO 2 gas-sensing devices.

Structural and Optical Properties of a Hybrid Material Based on Tin Oxides and Multilayer Periodic Structures with Pseudomorphic GeSiSn Layers

“…In its stoichiometric form, it is a good dielectric. However, violation of stoichiometry, for example, the presence of an oxygen vacancy, makes it a conducting material with n-type conductivity [17]. SnO 2 has a band gap in the range 3.6-3.8 eV.…”

Effect of annealing temperature on the morphology, structure, and optical properties of nanostructured SnO(x) films

“…Tin dioxide is an n-type wide-gap semiconductor with the band gap from 3.6 to 4 eV [8,9] and a transparency more than 85% [10]. SnO 2 films were obtained by such methods as molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) [11,12], pulsed laser deposition [13,14], electron-beam evaporation [15], sputtering [16] and the sol-gel process [17]. In most contributions, SnO 2 films are polycrystalline.…”