Enhanced Optical and Electrical Properties of Ti Doped In2O3 thin Films Treated by Post-deposition Electron Beam Irradiation

Transparent and conductive Ti doped In₂O₃ (TIO) films were prepared on slide glass substrate using a radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputter and then subjected to Transparent and conductive Ti doped In₂O₃ (TIO) films were prepared on a glass slide substrate using radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputter. The film surface was then subjected to intense electron beam irradiation, to study the influence of incident energy on the visible transmittance and electrical resistivity of the films. All x-ray diffraction plots exhibited some diffraction peaks of the cubic bixbyite In₂O₃ (222), (400), (332), (431), (440), and (444) planes regardless of the electron irradiation energy, while the characteristic diffraction peak for crystalline TiO₂ did not appear even when irradiated at 1500 eV. In atomic force microscope analysis, the surface roughness of the as deposited TIO films was found to be 0.63 nm. As the electron irradiation energy was increased up to 1500 eV, the root mean square roughness decreased down to 0.36 nm. The films electron irradiated at 1500 eV showed higher visible transmittance of 83.2% and the lower resistivity of 6.4 × 10^-4 Ωcm compared to the other films. From the electrical properties and optical band gap observation, it is supposed that the band gap shift is related to the carrier density. The band gap enlarged from 4.013 to 4.108 eV, along with an increase in carrier density from 9.82 × 10¹⁹ to 3.22 × 10²⁰ cm^-3.