Effect of hybrid nanoinks on solution-based Sn-doped In2O3 films under low-temperature microwave annealing

Solution-based Sn-doped In2O3 (ITO) films were fabricated using well-dispersed hybrid ITO nanoinks, which consisted of high-crystalline ITO nanoparticles and ITO sols, by combining the methods of spin-coating and low-temperature microwave annealing. To investigate the optimum conditions for the hybrid ITO nanoinks, we used four different weight ratios of ITO nanoparticles to ITO sols in the hybrid nanoinks: 0 (sample A), 0.06 (sample B), 0.12 (sample C), and 0.24 (sample D). Sample D exhibited superior sheet resistance (similar to 131.3 Omega/rectangle) good transmittance (similar to 87.2%), and excellent figure of merit (similar to 19.3 x 10(-4) Omega(-1)) when compared to the other samples. This improvement performance is due to the improved densification of the solution-based ITO films, where the optimum amount of ITO sols in the films served as a smooth medium that linked the high-crystalline ITO nanoparticles. Therefore, our study can offer a novel strategy that can be applied to flexible transparent conducting films (TCFs) as well as to the low-cost fabrication of high-performance TCFs in various optoelectronic applications. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd and Techna Group S.r.l. All rights reserved.