Structural, optical and electrical properties of semiconducting indium oxide thin film grown by thermal evaporation technique

Thin films of indium oxide have been grown on glass substrates by thermal evaporation of pure indium target and subsequent oxidation of the indium deposited films at 400°C for 3 hours. To study the utility of the synthesized indium oxide film as a suitable candidate for various applications involving wide band gap semiconductors, various characterisitics of the film were investigated. These included structural properties which were studied through XRD and SEM, optical properties studied using UV-ViS Spectrophotometry and electron transport characteristics that were investigated using 1-V and Hall measurements. The results indicated that the synthesized indium oxide film can be successfully used as a wide band gap semiconductor in applications such as optoelectronics, photovoltaics, solid state gas sensors etc.