Oxidation Kinetics of Nano Crystalline Tin Oxide Conductive Thin Films

Tin oxide was the first transparent conductor to have achieved significant commercialization. SnO₂ is an n-type semiconductor with an optical band gap of about 3.6 eV in poly crystalline form. One of the main reasons for the wide use is its rather desirable characteristic of having both, high optical transmittance and high electrical conductivity. Under optimum deposition conditions, tin oxide crystallizes in the tetragonal (rutile) structure. In this study, nano crystalline thin oxide conductive thin films has been manufactured by thermal evaporation techniques onto steel substrates using metallic tin targets and oxidation kinetics have been studied after D.C. plasma oxidation by using XRD (X-Ray Diffraction). The activation energy of SnO and SnO₂ from Sn phase transformations has also been studied.