Vacuum 133 (2016) 108e113

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Vacuum
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Influence of annealing temperature on structural properties of ITO

thin-films on graphite substrate
Muhammad Fahad Bhopal, Doo won Lee, Atteq-ur Rehman, Soo Hong Lee*
Green Strategic Energy Research Institute, Department of Electronics Engineering, Sejong University, 98 Gunja-dong, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, 143-747, South
Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In various industrial applications including thin-film solar cells indium tin oxide (ITO) is widely used. In
Received 28 April 2016 this research work highly electrically conductive Tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) was deposited on
Received in revised form graphite substrate using e-beam evaporator at substrate temperature 300
C and 400
C. Thermal
2 August 2016
treatment of the deposited ITO thin film was further done with the temperature values up to 900
C. ITO
Accepted 5 September 2016
Available online 9 September 2016
nanostructures were found to be grown at 400
C with diameters of 30e35 nm and remained stable even
at 800
C. At 900
C, the ITO characteristics were observed to change. The In and Sn concentrations were
decreased, while carbon (C) and oxygen (O2) were found to be increased at 900
C. The increase in O2 was
Keywords:
ITO thin-films
observed to be 54% while the concentration of C increased from 15% to 45%. Optical and FE-SEM char-
ITO nano-structures acterization were done to study the morphology and surface roughness of ITO thin-films. TEM and XRD
Annealing temperature was used to study the crystallinity of these ITO nanostructures. Similarly, X-Ray photoelectron spec-
troscopy (XPS) was used to measure the components and the chemical state. Depth profiling was
measured using secondary-ion-mass-spectroscopy (SIMS) of these thin films on graphite substrate at
different annealed temperatures upto 900
C.
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction conductive oxides in order to play with quantum confinement ef-

Direct conversion of solar energy into electrical energy using
photovoltaic devices is extremely promising way to get clean and
low-cost electric power [1]. Currently crystalline-silicon (c-Si) solar
cells are dominating the market. However, estimating the total
module cost of a solar cell; only wafer contributes 40% of it [2]. One
way to reduce the module cost is by using cost effective foreign
substrates. In this regard, several research activities had been per-
formed such as deposition of poly-silicon thin-film on some foreign
substrate. Several research groups fabricate thin-film solar cell by
using foreign substrate such as Glass [3], Mullite [4], graphite [5]
and Siliconized Silicon Carbide (SiSiC) [6]. On the said foreign
substrates, deposition of transparent oxides i.e., ZnO, ITO electrodes
are widely used in thin-film solar cells because of their good elec-
trical conductivity. Other applications of these oxides on foreign
substrates are as thin-film transistors [7], photovoltaics [8], trans-
parent displays [9], gas sensors [10] and storage devices [11].
Recently research has been conducted on nanostructures of these
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: shl@sejong.ac.kr (S.H. Lee).
fect to improve some of their properties [12]. This is related to the
significant changes in the macroscopic characteristics of materials
in the nanostructured morphology. Properties such as mechanical
flexibility also helps to increase the absorption. Keeping in view the
merits of using conductive oxides on foreign substrates and
increasing the efficiency of a solar cell recently, transparent
conductive oxides (TCOs) nanostructures were fabricated on glass
substrate using different deposition techniques like DC magnetron
sputtering, thermal evaporation, chemical vapor deposition and e-
beam evaporator [8,12e15]. These thin-films were characterized
and analyzed by varying different parameters and using different
techniques. Characterization parameters include: growth condi-
tions with substrate heating, chamber pressure and plasma power
etc. Currently, people are working on crystalline solar cell and thin-
film solar cells on textured substrate. Texturing of both silicon and
glass substrate have shown prominent signature in solar cell effi-
ciency. In silicon thin-film solar cells the surface is textured from
flat surface using dry etching processes in reactive ion etching or
plasma etching. This step enhances the light trapping in solar cells
and ultimately enhances its efficiency. In recent year the use of
nano-wires as an efficient source as a light trapping and absorbance

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.vacuum.2016.09.001
0042-207X/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 M.F. Bhopal et al. / Vacuum 133 (2016) 108e113
has gained the attention of researchers [16e19]. Deposition of these
nanostructures using e-beam evaporator has the advantage over
other deposition techniques because it requires no metal catalyst to
grow nanowires [20]. Mostly, these nano-structures are grown on
glass substrate. However, these substrates are stable at low tem-
perature <600
C [1,21].
There are very few reports available for the growth of ITO thin
films at higher temperature (>600
C). Liu at el. used sol gel method
to prepare ITO thin films on the glass substrate they suggested that
the crystal structure remain stable between 400
C and 750
C and
then there was sudden change in crystal structure at 800
C due to
lattice distortion and gain refining [22]. Gulen at el. deposited ITO
film on soda lime glass using DC magnetron sputtering system and
they studied the electrical and optical properties of the thin films by
annealing in range of 100
Ce700
C. They confirmed that the in-
crease in annealing temperature upto 700
C has produced stresses
due to growth in (400) direction [23]. Similar study has been
conducted by Yinzhi Chen at el., where it is found that at temper-
atures above 900
C the dominant orientation is (400) [24].
All these studies motivated us to work on structural changes of
ITO nanostructures with annealing at higher temperatures. We
choose graphite substrate because of its stability against high
temperature upto 1400
C and it is low cost carbon substrate. The
study of ITO thin-film at higher temperature is also to address the
processes like crystallinity of silicon and phosphorus diffusion, as
the required temperatures are up to 800
C. Moreover samples
were annealed at different temperature ranges reaching maximum
temperature of upto 900
C. At 400
C it was observed that the
incoming species of indium tin oxide start nucleating with the
activated sites and vapor solid (VS) self-unidirectional growth
starts and nanostructure growth was observed. At 800
C similar
characteristics were observed. At temperature above 800
C,
properties of ITO nanostructures changes giving the perception of
instability at higher temperature range. Optical microscope and FE-
SEM reveals rod like surface morphology of these ITO nano-
structures. X-ray diffraction (XRD) of the rod like nanostructures
show growth of nanowires with crystalline structure. The chemical
composition and chemical structure of surface of ITO over graphite
substrate at different post annealing temperatures were analyzed
using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Secondary Ion mass
spectroscopy (SIMS) was used to analyze the elemental depth
profiling of samples annealed at different temperatures.
2. Experimental work
In this research work we deposited ITO thin-film on graphite
substrate at room temperature and 400
C and study of its stability
at higher temperature on graphite substrate is presented. We used
commercially available graphite substrate having surface rough-
ness of about 1.5 mm. The cleaning of the substrates was chemically
done by using conventional RCA1 and RCA2 cleaning protocol. ITO
was deposited using e-beam evaporator. During deposition cham-
ber pressure was achieved 1.1  105 Torr using rotary and turbo
pumps and it was kept stable at same pressure. Prior to deposition
e-beam evaporator was heated at temperature 400
C for substrate
heating and deposition at 400
C. ITO coated Graphite substrate
was further annealed in conventional furnace in nitrogen envi-
ronment with temperature up to 900
C for 1 h. Total thickness of
ITO film was 300 nm and the deposition rate was kept at 0.5 A/s.
The highly pure ITO source (99.99%) 90 wt% of In2O3 and 10 wt% of
SnO2 were used in experiment. FE-SEM and TEM was used to
observe the ITO films surface on graphite substrate. X-ray diffrac-
tion was done in order to study the phases and crystal structure of
as grown ITO films. Further analysis was done using XPS to calculate
the atomic concentration of carbon, indium and oxygen at different
109
annealed temperatures. Depth profile of ITO on graphite substrate
was done using SIMS. Optical characterization was done in
following experiment to analyze the surface roughness using
Olympus BX121 optical microscope optical microscope.
3. Result and discussion
Indium tin oxide nano-wires were grown using e-beam evap-
orator. The conventional VLS required high temperature processes
to decompose the metal oxide during the growth process, for for-
mation of high quality products without contamination. In such a
case e-beam can easily decompose materials with high melting
points. Very low oxygen environment can help to reduce the
decomposition temperature of metal oxide material, such as high
vacuum, ITO can be easily decompose by the electron-beam, and
sufficient Metal flux for the self-catalyst of the VLS process can be
achieved under high vacuum pressure. In such process VLS growth
can easily be achieved. Vapor pressure which is required for self-
catalyst formation can easily be achieved using electron beam un-
der very low oxygen partial pressure as compared to conventional
tools. In conventional heat furnace have limited temperature range
<1500
C, however for decomposing the metal-oxide higher tem-
perature required (>1500
C). Over the electron beam evaporation
is more ideal for growth of ITO nanowires by decomposing of the
metal oxide during irradiation [13].
This study helps us to understand the ITO structural properties
under different annealing temperatures on graphite substrate for
thin-film photovoltaics. It is very important to select the parame-
ters to understand this study. In this study the ITO film thickness
was fixed and the temperature ranges was 400
Ce900
C. For this
reason, annealing temperature was used as a parameter.
3.1. Optical characterization
Fig. 1(a) shows the optical image of graphite substrate along
with the 2D and 3D images. Fig. 1 shows the surface of the graphite
substrate captured by optical microscope. Fig. 1(b) shows the in-
dium tin oxide coated on graphite substrate, optical image shows
the as-grown film of ITO having thickness of 300 nm on graphite
substrate. Similarly, 2D and 3D images shows the surface topology
of ITO. We can visualize that the surface is smooth after substrate
heating at 300
C as shown in Fig. 1 (b), and the nanowires growth
has observed after substrate heating at 400
C on graphite substrate
shown in Fig. 1 (c). We have performed the AFM on these ITO nano-
structures and the results are already published [25] at low tem-
perature. We have provided these results in the Supplementary
data. From the results we can see clearly the surface roughness
for annealed and non-annealed samples. The increase in roughness
also give a clue of increase in number of nucleation sites on sub-
strate which may be the reason of nanowires growth. Fig. 1 (d) has
the optical visual of the sample annealed at 900
C, which shows
that at the surface there is reduction of ITO elements. This reduc-
tion can be caused due to the impurities added from the substrate
to the surface.
3.2. Structural analysis
Fig. 2 shows the FESEM of ITO surface which was deposited on
graphite substrate at different substrate temperatures. Fig. 2(a)
shows the ITO film on graphite substrate having substrate tem-
perature 300
C, while the clusters and grain of ITO film are shown
in inset of Fig. 2 (a). The magnification of same area showing
growth of nanowires has been shown in Fig. 2(b) and its inset at
substrate heating 400
C spherical shape nanowires growth was
observed.
110 M.F. Bhopal et al. / Vacuum 133 (2016) 108e113

Fig. 1. Optical images (a) Graphite substrate (b) ITO thin-film (c) ITO nano-structured (d) Annealed at 900
C.

Fig. 2. (a). SEM image of ITO film on graphite substrate (b) ITO nano wires observed at substrate heating at 400
C (c) Annealing at 800
C.

Fig. 2(b) and (c) shows the low magnification FESEM image of a
bunch of ITO nanowires, as inset shows the high magnification of
same image, that the diameter of these ITO nanowires have above
30 nm. Due to these nanowires surface became rough. Samples
were further annealed in nitrogen ambient in a conventional tube
furnace to observe the stability of ITO on graphite substrate. ITO
coated graphite substrate is annealed up to 900
C.
Fig. 3 shows TEM image, samples was prepared having substrate
heating 400
C at which we found ITO nanowires. Samples were
prepared by scraping the portion of the nanowire film from the
graphite substrate and dispersed in IPA solution. Further this so-
lution was kept under ultrasonic bath for 1 h. Finally, then drop this
nanowire solution on carbon Quantifoil copper grid and dried on
hotplate at 120
C for 10 min. Inset of Fig. 3(a) shows the TEM image
clearly shows the ITO nano-wire having diameter of 40 nm. Fig. 3
(b) shows the high-resolution of ITO nano wires, in which we can
clearly see the lattice fringes. Spacing between the lattice fringes of
ITO nano-wires was found to be about 0.29 nm. Aligned crystal
lattice planes were observed. Inset shows the selected data electron
diffraction (SAED) data shows the high degree of crystallinity of ITO
nano-wires.
The crystallinity of these ITO nanowires at different tempera-
tures was further confirmed by X-ray diffraction. Fig. 4 shows the
phase of deposited ITO film on graphite substrate from temperature
400
C to 900
C. It can be found that at 400
C and 800
C, XRD
pattern matches the line at 2q at 31.56
which corresponds that the
consideration from the (222) plane is close to the position of
strongest line of the reference In2O3 (Indium oxide) as indicated in
PDF-# 06e0416 of JCPDS. The other peaks are also corresponding to
the plane (400) and (440) [26,27]. There is also a sharp peak at 2q at
25.5
showing the presence of graphite with its plane (002) [28] as
indicated in PDF # 75e1621 of JCPDS. It can also be found that ITO

Fig. 3. TEM images of an ITO nano-wires deposited by e-beam evaporator. (a) Bulk of nano-wires on coper grid, inset shows TEM image of ITO nano-wire having thickness of 40 nm.
(b) High resolution of TEM of ITO nano-wire, we added dark lines to mark the lattice fringes and SAED data in the inset.
 M.F. Bhopal et al. / Vacuum 133 (2016) 108e113
Fig. 4. X-ray diffraction (2q) patterns for ITO thin films as a function of temperature. At
800
C shows the ITO peaks, 900
C shows only graphite peaks.
shoulder is found at 800
C similar to that found at lower tem-
perature region. XRD patterns have shown the decrease in the in-
tegrated intensities of (222) and (400) planes at 850
C annealing
temperature as shown in Fig. 4. This also confirm the abrupt change
in structural properties at annealing temperature above 800
C. The
similar behavior was observed in reference to the nano-wires
electrical properties, where resistivity increase at 850
C. The
possible underlying mechanism behind this is the reaction of car-
bon from the graphite substrate with In and Sn species from the
graphite substrate above 800
C. SEM morphology shows that ITO
structures still exist on the graphite substrate at 850
C but with
compromised original characteristics At 900
C we cannot see the
ITO peak, only graphite peak was observed as shown in XRD, this
shows that carbon impurities from graphite substrate diffuses in
ITO layer and become dominant. This would be further discussed in
our next section.
3.3. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy XPS
The chemical composition was studied by X-ray photoelectron
Fig. 5. XPS characterization at different temperature shows the atomic percentage of
materials.
111
spectroscopy (XPS). Fig. 5 shows the relative atomic concentrations
of Sn, O, C and ln were analyzed quantitatively and their depen-
dence on the annealing temperature. Upon sintering at 900
C, Sn
and ln almost disappears; on the other hand C concentration in-
creases sharply from 15% to 45%, similarly O concentration in-
creases to 53%. The drastic decrease of ln and Sn concentration
caused by annealing suggests that the ln and Sn are residual ele-
ments rather than an adventitious extrinsic impurity.
From Fig. 5, the atomic concentration of In and Sn has reduced
on the graphite substrate rapidly at 900
C annealing temperature.
At 400
C the In and Sn atomic concentration was 27 and 11%
respectively. At 800
C no such big difference appeared in atomic
concentration, however there was a slight reduction in Sn con-
centration. But at 900
C this atomic concentration reduces to 0.03
and 0.94% for both In and Sn, respectively. This is due to the fact that
annealing above 800
C causes the oxidation of graphite substrate
which results in the release of carbon from the substrate. This
released carbon then reacted with In2O3 and SnO2 and results in the
possible reaction as shown in Equations (1) and (2) [29]. As a result
of this reaction In2O, CO2, SnO2 and CO were released from the
substrate in gaseous form.
In2O3 (s) þC (s) / In2O (v) þ CO2 (v) (1)
SnO2 (s) þC (s) / SnO (v) þ CO(v) (2)
Due to this reason In and Sn contents have decreased after
annealing at 800
C which was also confirmed by SIM AND XPS
results in later section. Fig. 6 (a) depicts the comparison of as-
grown and annealed samples at 800
C. Results shows strong
peaks of In3d of the survey spectra. Also, the peaks of Sn3d and O1s
are seen. The thickness of patterned ITO film is 300 nm, after the
heat-treatment at 900
C, C1s peaks shown dominatly as shown in
fig. (c), Comparing the selected spectra in Fig. 6(a) with Fig. 6(b), the
peaks of In3d and Sn3d were strong.
On the contrary, in Fig. 6(c) after annealing temperature 900
C,
it has only the carbon signal from the graphite substrate and oxy-
gen contents also increases. Therefore, it shows that the leached
part was completely diffused without any remaining ITO, as seen
from the survey spectrum analysis.
Inset of Fig. 6 shows the elemental analysis, a narrow scan of
In3d and Sn3d. The high-resolution spectra of In3d as-grown and at
800
C and Sn3d doublets are shown in Fig. (a) and (b), respectively.
The binding energy of In3d5/2 was 444.38 eV and ln3d3/2 was
452.28 eV. The binding energy of Sn3d5/2 found at 486.78 eV and
Sn3d3/2 at 495.18 eV [30,31]. However if we look at sample
annealed at 900
C the In3d element extinct.
In Fig. 6 (c), the ITO coated graphite substrate annealed at 900
C
shows the strong carbon peak and the ln3d peaks did not appear in
it however, Sn3d having very low atomic concentration, this shows
the carbon diffuse desorption at the surface and the O peak
increasing at 900
C annealed sample. This is due to when carbon-
carbon bonds break at high temperature, impurities from graphite
substrate come to the surface and the probability of oxidation in-
creases, also CO and CO2 dominant at higher temperature [32,33].
However, graphite substrate start absorbing oxygen from ITO which
breaks indium tin energy bonds.
3.4. Secondary ion mass spectrometry SIMS
Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) was employed as the
key method to analyze depth profile [34,35]. SIMS analysis was
carried out at a 60 nA current, with an impact energy of 2 keV. The
focused primary beam was rastered over a 300 mm  300 mm area.
All elemental profile was obtained in single measurement. Fig. 7
112 M.F. Bhopal et al. / Vacuum 133 (2016) 108e113

Fig. 6. (a).Survey spectrum analyses of the microfabricated ITO films on graphite substrate as-grown (b) annealed sample at 800
C (c) Annealed sample at 900
C. Inset shows
narrow scan analyses of the microfabricated ITO films on graphite substrate (a) as-grown (b) annealed sample at 800
C (c) Annealed sample at 900
C.

Fig. 7. (a). Secondary ion mass spectrometery of the microfabricated ITO films on graphite substrate as-grown (b) annealed sample at 800
C (c) annealed sample at 900
C.

shows the interface of ITO and graphite substrate. As-grown and
annealed samples at 800
C shows the ITO elements which includes
In, Sn and O which reveals that high level of ITO elements are
visible from the SIMS profile. In the temperature range from as-
grown to 800
C, carbon does not intercalate into ITO, from
Fig. 7(a) and (b) we can see that no strong peak of C is appeared. As
the annealed temperature increases, the carbon concentration also
increases towards the surface, and results are quite compatible
with other characterization tools. At 900
C the carbon concen-
tration increases and moves to the surface of the sample on the
other hand In and Sn contents rapidly decreased at 900
C annealed
sample. This also proved the stability of the ITO on graphite sub-
strate upto 800
C temperature.
Complete sets of electrical measurement of the annealed ITO
nano-wires are shown in Table 1. Resistivity of ITO nano-wires
annealed from 400
C to 800
C was in the range of 5.22
104e8.63  104 U cm, which is very close to the resistivity
measured by other research groups. However sudden increase in
the resistivity was observed at 850
C annealing temperature which
was due to the lost in the structural property of the ITO nano-wires
as discussed earlier. This is due to the interplanar distance which
reduces at 400
C and above this temperature there will be a slight
change in the oxygen vacancies of the ITO thin-film [36], however
there is no significant change in resistivity (about 8.63  104 U cm)
was observed for the sample annealed at 800
C.
4. Conclusion
In this research work we studied the characteristics of ITO on
graphite substrates for thin-film solar cell application at different
annealing temperatures. ITO thin-film was deposited using e-beam
evaporator on commercially available graphite substrate. It was
observed that above 300
C the VS (vapor solid) nanostructured
growth starting of ITO thin-film occurs. These nanostructures were
further annealed up to 900
C to observe the stability at graphite
substrates. Nanostructures were visualized using Optical micro-
scope and FE-SEM at 400
C and 800
C. TEM results shows the high
degree of crystallinity of ITO nano-wires. Orientation of ITO were
characterized using XRD at different annealed temperatures. The
chemical composition of thin film was studied using XPS. Atomic
concentrations of Sn, O, C and ln were analyzed quantitatively at
different annealed temperatures up to 900
C. In and Sn remained
stable up till a temperature value of 800
C, and above 800
C the
carbon components from the graphite substrate break the bonds of
ITO. Depth profile studied using SIMS suggests that these nano-
structures remains stable for a maximum temperature range of
800
C. Electrical measurement also shown low resistivity stability
between 400
C and 800
C. This stability of these nanostructures at
higher temperature can be adopted for texturing and metallization
purpose to fabricate high efficiency thin film solar cells. Moreover,
the good electrical properties of these nanostructures can play a
vital role in enhancing the efficiency of thin film solar cells on
graphite substrates.

Table 1
Resistivity measurements as a function of annealing temperature of ITO nano-wires. Acknowledgments





Temperature 300 C 400 C 800 C 850 C
The authors would like to acknowledge the Ministry of Trade,
Resistivity(ohm.cm) 1.2  103 5.22  104 8.63  104 3.02  103
Industry, and Energy, New Power-Plasma (NPP) (No. 10043793),
 M.F. Bhopal et al. / Vacuum 133 (2016) 108e113 113

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