STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF SN DOPING ON THE ELECTRONIC TRANSPORT-PROPERTIES OF THIN-FILM INDIUM OXIDE

High quality, low resistivity (2.6 X 10(-4) OMEGA cm), 0.32-mum-thick amorphous and polycrystalline, pure and Sn-doped, In2O3 films prepared by high density plasma-assisted electron beam evaporation were used to investigate the effect of Sn doping on the electronic transport properties of this material. Amorphous films with high carrier density in the as-deposited state showed no effect of Sn doping on resistivity (rho), Hall mobility (mu), or carrier density (n) over the range 0 to 5.3 wt % Sn. After recrystallization by annealing in air at 180 or 250-degrees-C for 20 min, n, mu, and rho were seen to be strongly dependent on Sn concentration in the range 0 to 1.5 wt % with a decreasing effect of Sn doping in the range 1.5 to 5.3 wt %. The data presented in this study were analyzed based on charged and neutral impurity scattering models and suggest that increasing Sn concentration leads to the formation of defect complexes which act as scattering centers but which do not contribute carriers to the material.