Study of Microstructural and Optical Properties of Nanocrystalline Indium Oxide: A Transparent Conducting Oxide (TCO)

Indium Oxide (In2O3)is avery promising material among transparent conducting oxides (TCO) and dilute magnetic semiconductors (DMS) family as it has potential application in optoelectronic devices such as solar cells, liquid crystal displays and touchscreens etc due to its extraordinary microstructural, electrical transport and optical properties. In the present study the structural properties of In2O3,prepared by solid state reaction route,were investigated using X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR). The optical properties of the sample have also been studied using Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy (DRS) and Photoluminescence (PL) Spectroscopy. The Rietveld refined XRD pattern indicates the cubic bixbyite structure of In2O3 with space group I 21 3 (199). The lattice strain and crystallite size are calculated using the Williamson Hall plot and also confirmed by Scherrer formula. The optical band gap of In2O3 is found to be 3.54 eV. The presence of oxygen vacancies and other defects in the assynthesized material has been confirmed by emission spectrum.