Investigating the effect of the annealing parameters on the resistance of indium tin oxide nanocrystalline films

Transparent conductive oxides (TCO) can absorb in the near-infrared region and present good conductivity. Because of their strong absorption in the near-infrared, TCO are being studied as potential materials for infrared photovoltaics. Electromagnetic radiation impinging the material generates hot electrons; at the interface with a proper semiconductor, hot electron extraction from the TCO to the semiconductor can occur if the energy of the hot electron is higher concerning the bottom of the conduction band of the semiconductor. This phenomenon has been observed in indium tin oxide (ITO)/tin oxide interfaces, fluorine indium co-doped cadmium oxide/rhodamine interfaces, and indium tin oxide/molybdenum disulphide interfaces. Finally, exploiting the possibility to tune the plasmon resonance, via a change in the number of carriers in the material, TCOs are widely employed as smart windows. In this research, the optical and electrical properties of films made of nanoparticles of indium tin oxide (ITO) are widely studied because of the significance of this material for transparent electrodes, smart windows, and nonlinear optics components. In this work, a systematic study of the resistance in ITO nanocrystalline films, as a function of post-fabrication parameters, such as the temperature and time of annealing, has been performed. Last, we demonstrate a tunability of the resistance with the annealing parameters in a range of three orders of magnitude.