Preparation Of P-type Transparent Conductive Tin-Antimony Oxide Thin Films By DC Magnetron Sputtering

p-type conducting oxides (p-TCO ) films, which are essential for p-n junction and further for transparent electronic devices. p-type wide band-gap oxide semiconductor materials have been a researched focus, attracting many researchers' interest. Although it has made a great progress, but the electrical properties, or the optical properties, or the stability of the present p-TCOs are not satisfactory, so new p-TCOs with better characteristics should be developed for practical application.In this thesis, the developments of p-type TCOs have been reviewed first. On this bases, according to the electronic configuratiosn of antimony oxide and the principle of p-type doping in wide band-gap semiconductors oxides, we tried to develop a new transparent conducting tin-antimony oxide films with p-type conduction. p-type transparent conductive tin-antimony oxide thin films were successfully prepared by DC reactive magnetron sputtering, followed by post annealing in air. And the processing parameters were characterized systematically. The structural, optical, electrical properties, surface morphology and chemical valence were studied by XRD, UV-Vis transmittance spectrum and Hall, FESEM, XPS, respectively.It was found that 0.22≤Sn/Sb ratio ≤0.34, O₂/Ar ratio ≥ 0.32, post-annealing temperatures≥400℃, were the range in which p-type tin-antimony oxide films were obtained. The films were polycrystalline with an orthorhombic structure of Sb₂O₄. Hole concentratiosn as high as 7.74×10¹⁹cm^-3 with a lowest resistivity value of 0.22Ω·cm was achieved, showing potential applications of tin-antimony oxide films as p-type transparent conducting oxides. The mechanics of p-type tin-antimony oxide films is Sn⁴⁺ enter into the substitution sites of Sb⁵⁺ to behave as acceptors;which realized p-type conduction.