What are transparent conductive oxides?

What are transparent conductive oxides?

Transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) are electrical conductive materials with a comparably low absorption of light. They are usually prepared with thin film technologies and used in opto-electrical devices such as solar cells, displays, opto-electrical interfaces and circuitries.

Why is transparent conducting oxide used in solar cell and LED?

Transparent conducting films are typically used as electrodes when a situation calls for low resistance electrical contacts without blocking light (e.g. LEDs, photovoltaics). As such, photons with energies below the bandgap value are not absorbed by these materials and visible light passes through.

What is transparent conductive electrodes?

Transparent Conducting Electrodes (TCEs) are widely used in optoelectronic devices like solar cells, light emitting diodes, liquid crystal display, and tough screens. Fully non-vacuum processed CIGS solar cells using electrodeposited absorber and Ag nanowires based transparent TCO has reached efficiency above 12%.

Are metal oxides electrically conductive?

As mentioned previously, conductive transparent metal oxides exhibit excellent conductivity and transparency, which is needed for industrial applications. Moreover, these metal oxides exhibit poor electrical contact with organic substrates.

Are there any transparent conductors?

Transparent, electrically conductive films have been prepared from a wide variety of materials. These include semiconducting oxides of tin, indium, zinc, and cadmium, and metals such as silver, gold, and titanium nitride.

Is Ito a metal?

In the infrared region of the spectrum it acts as a metal-like mirror. Indium tin oxide is one of the most widely used transparent conducting oxides because of its electrical conductivity and optical transparency, as well as the ease with which it can be deposited as a thin film.

What are transparent electronics?

Transparent electronics is an emerging technology that employs wide band-gap semiconductors for the realization of invisible circuits. This monograph provides the first roadmap for transparent electronics, identifying where the field is, where it is going, and what needs to happen to move it forward.

Is silver oxide electrically conductive?

Silver oxide is a semi-conductive p-type with a 1.2eV. The oxygen vacancies appear to play a dominant position in the silver oxide conductive system [10] . …

Is TiO an electrical conductor?

And in the case of (B) TiO (s) which behaves like a metal also can conduct electricity because the d-electrons are partially filled and leads to electrical conductivity.

What makes something transparent?

Transparency and Transmission. An object is said to be transparent when light passes through it without being dispersed, or scattered. Transparent objects exhibit complete transmission of the light waves through the object. An object looks transparent because light waves pass through unchanged.

Is ITO conductive?

The ITO films are highly transparent (90.2%) and conductive (ρ = 7.2 × 10–4 Ω·cm) with the highest figure of merit (1.19 × 10–2 Ω–1) among all the solution-processed ITO films reported to date.

Why is ITO type N?

ITO film is basically n-type degenerate semiconductor, for which a simple efficient solar cell is obtained when rectifying contact is formed between ITO and Si.

What is a transparent conductive oxide?

INTRODUCTION Transparent conductive oxides (TCO) are used in a wide range of applications, including low-e windows, transparent contacts for solar cells, optoelectronic devices, flat panel displays, liquid crystal devices, touch screens, EMI shielding and automobile window deicing and defogging.

What are transparent conductive thin films used for?

Transparent conductive thin films are used as the transparent electrical contacts in flat panel displays, sensors, and optical limiters. New developing applications are the charge carrier layerransparent s in t transistors and solar cells, dye sensitive solar cells and organic solar cells.

What is a TCO semiconductor?

TCO’s are generally n-type wide bandgap semiconductors (although p-type materials are now being developed) with a relatively high concentration of free electrons in the conduction band. The wide bandgap is responsible for high optical transmittance and free electrons increase electrical conductivity.

What are the properties of UV-visible transparent coatings?

Visible transparency can be up to 90% (thin coatings) with transmission windows spanning from 0.35 to 3.5 µm and resistivities from 1 to 8 × 10 −4 Ω·cm for ITO ( Bright, 2013 ). Moreover, they can absorb UV and reflect IR wavelengths, making them useful heat reflectors with UV protection.