High Optical Transmittance of Indium Tin Oxide Nanorods Prepared by Electron Beam Evaporation with Glancing Angle Deposition Technique

Abstract

In this work, indium tin oxide (ITO) nanorods were deposited on glass slides without ITO dense layers by electron beam evaporation. To fabricate the ITO nanorods, the glancing angle deposition (GLAD) technique was introduced with different rotating speeds from 10 to 50 rpm. The grown nanorod layer was investigated by x-ray diffraction (XRD) to study the film quality. Field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) was used to evaluate the surface morphology with geometry and dimension of nanorods relating to the rotating speed. A UV-Vis spectrophotometer was used for the optical transmittance and it was found that the nanorod morphology had improved to obtain higher transmittance of ITO layers. Furthermore, the rotating speed of the substrate at a fixed angle of 85° also enhanced the transmittance of a nanorod film. The transmittance percentage of ITO nanorods grown on the glass slide is 92% at the wavelength of 550 nm, which is much higher than that of only the ITO dense layer.