Optical Reflectance of Pure and Doped Tin Oxide: From Thin Films to Poly-Crystalline Silicon/Thin Film Device

Authors: Smaali Assia, Outemzabet Ratiba, Media El Mahdi, Kadi Mohamed

Abstract:

Films of pure tin oxide SnO2 and in presence of antimony atoms (SnO2-Sb) deposited onto glass substrates have shown a sufficiently high energy gap to be transparent in the visible region, a high electrical mobility and a carrier concentration which displays a good electrical conductivity [1]. In this work, the effects of polycrystalline silicon substrate on the optical properties of pure and Sb doped tin oxide is investigated. We used the APCVD (atmospheric pressure chemical vapour deposition) technique, which is a low-cost and simple technique, under nitrogen ambient, for growing this material. A series of SnO2 and SnO2-Sb have been deposited onto polycrystalline silicon substrates with different contents of antimony atoms at the same conditions of deposition (substrate temperature, flow oxygen, duration and nitrogen atmosphere of the reactor). The effect of the substrate in terms of morphology and nonlinear optical properties, mainly the reflectance, was studied. The reflectance intensity of the device, compared to the reflectance of tin oxide films deposited directly on glass substrate, is clearly reduced on the overall wavelength range. It is obvious that the roughness of the poly-c silicon plays an important role by improving the reflectance and hence the optical parameters. A clear shift in the minimum of the reflectance upon doping level is observed. This minimum corresponds to strong free carrier absorption, resulting in different plasma frequency. This effect is followed by an increase in the reflectance depending of the antimony doping. Applying the extended Drude theory to the combining optical and electrical obtained results these effects are discussed.

Keywords: Doping, oxide, reflectance.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1331623

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