Fabrication of Highly Transparent and Conductive Indium-Tin Oxide Thin Films with a High Figure of Merit via Solution Processing

Deposition technology of transparent conducting oxide (TCO) thin films is critical for high performance of optoelectronic devices. Solution-based fabrication methods can result in substantial cost reduction and enable broad applicability of the TCO thin films. Here we report a simple and highly effective solution process to fabricate indium-tin oxide (ITO) thin films with high uniformity, reproducibility, and scalability. The ITO films are highly transparent (90.2%) and conductive (rho = 7.2 X 10(-4) Omega.cm) with the highest figure of merit (1.19 X 10(-2) Omega(-1)) among all the solution-processed ITO films reported to date. The high transparency and figure of merit, low sheet resistance (30 Omega/sq), and roughness (1.14 nm) are comparable with the benchmark properties of dc sputtering and can meet the requirements for most practical applications.