A Detailed Study on the Structural, Electrical and Optical Properties of (ZnO-GeO2) Substituted In2O3 Transparent Conducting Oxide

Abstract

In this study, ZnO and GeO2 substituted In2O3 ternary system is investigated with various characterizationmethods for optical, electrical and structural properties. This new transparent conducting oxide prepareddifferent composition which can be symbolized as ZnxIn2-2xGexO3 0.1 ≤ 𝑥 ≤ 0.5. The optical properties ofthe samples obtained show that the optical band gap enhances from 2.94 eV to 3.16 eV with theaugmentation of the x value. Conductivity values for 𝑥 = 0.1 is about 308 S/cm and 1060 S/cm forunreduced and reduced samples respectively. The reduced conductivity of Zn0.476In1.032Ge0.476O3 is about135 S/cm and for this composition samples are phase pure for new fluorite related phase. Thus, this studystresses the importance of cosubstitution to decrease amount of indium and understanding the variousresults for bulk samples.