Fabrication of ITO thin films by filtered cathodic vacuum arc deposition

Polycrystalline indium–tin-doped oxide (ITO) thin films have been fabricated on Si(1 1 1) and quartz substrates by filtered cathodic vacuum arc (FCVA) technique for the first time. The ITO thin films were deposited at different substrate temperature and oxygen gas flow rates into the reactor chamber. The films deposited at low temperature below 100 °C are amorphous. The films grown between 200 and 350 °C mainly oriented in the (2 2 2), (4 0 0), (4 4 0), and (6 2 2) directions both on silicon substrate and quartz substrate. The optimized ITO film has a high transmittance of about 95% in the wavelength range of 400–800 nm, the volume resistivity is 6.57×10−4 Ω cm and the electron carrier concentration is as high as 1.62×1021 cm−3. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) images show that the surface of ITO film is very smooth both on silicon and quartz substrates, the RMS average roughness is 2.24 nm for silicon substrate and 2.43 nm for quartz substrate respectively.