Research progress of tin oxide-based thin films and thin-film transistors prepared by sol-gel method

Abstract

Transparent conductive oxide (TCO) films and transparent oxide semiconductor (TOS) films have been widely adopted in solar cells, flat panel displays, smart windows, and transparent flexible electronic devices due to their advantages of high transparency and good conductivity and so on. Most of TCO and TOS films are mainly derived from indium oxide, zinc oxide and tin oxide. Among these materials, the In element is toxic, rare and expensive for indium oxide film, which will cause environmental pollution; zinc oxide film is sensitive to acid or alkali etchants, resulting in a poor formation of film patterning; tin oxide film is not only non-toxic, eco-friendly, and cheap but also has good electrical properties and strong chemical stability. Thus, tin oxide has a great potential for developing the TCO and TOS films. At present, the film is prepared mainly by the vacuum deposition technique. The drawbacks of this technique are complex and expensive equipment system, high energy consumption, complicated process and high-cost production. However, compared with the vacuum deposition technique, the sol-gel method has attracted extensive attention because of its virtues such as simple process and low cost. In this paper, we review the development status and trend of TCO and TOS films. First, the structural characteristics, conductive mechanism, element doping theory and carrier scattering mechanism of tin oxide thin films are introduced. Then the principle of sol-gel method and correlative film fabrication techniques are illustrated. Subsequently, the application and development of tin oxide-based thin films prepared by sol-gel method in n-type transparent conductive films, thin-film transistors and p-type semiconductor films in recent years are described. Finally, current problems and future research directions are also pointed out.

Synergistic Effect of Electron Scattering and Space Charge Transfer Enabled Unprecedented Room Temperature NO2 Sensing Response of SnO2

“…06-0395) appears at 29.8°, which may be due to the existence of a large number of O V s in the SnO 2 -NA, resulting in the formation of nonstoichiometric SnO 2 . [25] The XRD characteristic peaks of SnO 2 -Air can be assigned to tetragonal rutile SnO 2 (JCPDS No. 41-1445) and tetragonal SnO (JCPDS No.…”

Research and Application Progress of Conductive Films in Energy Storage Devices

“…Therefore, high valence anions and cations can be introduced into the SnO 2 lattice by doping to replace O 2 and Sn 4+ to increase the carrier concentration and improve the conductivity. [97] Some studies on SnO 2 -based doped films are given in Table 2.…”

Understanding the role of Niobium, Molybdenum and Tungsten in realizing of the transparent n-type SnO2

“…Tin dioxide (SnO 2 ) is considered to be one of the most promising TCMs due to its excellent optical, electrical, electro-chemical properties and earth-abundant nontoxic composition [10]. As an important and widely used wide gap semiconductor, SnO 2 has several phases such as the rutile-type (P42/mnm), α-PbO 2 -type (Pbcn), fluorite-type (Fm3m), CaCl 2 -type (Pnnm), ZrO 2 -type orthorhombic phase I (Pbca) and cotunnite-type orthorhombic phase II (Pnam) [11,12].…”