Pulsed laser deposition of nanostructured indium-tin-oxide film

Effects of O 2 , N 2 , Ar and He on the formation of micro- and nanostructured indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films were investigated in pulsed Nd:YAG laser deposition on glass substrate. For O 2 and Ar, ITO resistivity of ≤ 4 × 10 -4 Ωcm and optical transmittance of > 90% were obtained with substrate temperature of 250 °C. For N 2 and He, low ITO resisitivity could be obtained but with poor optical transmittance. SEM images show nano-structured ITO thin films for all gases, where dense, larger and highly oriented, microcrystalline structures were obtained for deposition in O 2 and He, as revealed from the XRD lines. EDX results indicated the inclusion of Ar and N 2 at the expense of reduced tin (Sn) content. When the ITO films were applied for fabrication of organic light emitting devices (OLED), only those deposited in Ar and O 2 produced comparable performance to single-layer OLED fabricated on the commercial ITO.