CALCULATION OF THE ELECTRONIC EFt ECTIVE MASS OF TRANSPARENT CONDUCTING METAL OXIDES USED IN OPTOELECTRONIC DEVICES

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Lecturer, Dpt Of Optoelectronics, Military Technical College, Cairo, Egypt.

Abstract

Transparent conducting metal oxides had become an extremely important in many applications including solar cells, microelectronics, electrochromic displays, heat min-ors and gas sensors. It has high electrical conductivity, high optical transparency in the visible region of the solar spectrum and high reflectivity in the infrared region of the solar spectrum.
In this work thin films of Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) were vacuum deposited using an electron beam evaporator Analysis of the films was performed using spectrophotometric , X-ray diffraction and the standard electrical measurement (mobility and resistivity). A model for the free electrons concentration as a function of the carriers effective mass in heavily doped metal oxide semiconductors is introduced. This model is applied on the results of this experimental work and on some of the published data as well. The optimum concentration of the free electrons in indium tin oxide was found to be when the electron effective mass lies between 0.29 mo and 0.32 ma . These results agree with the experimentally measured and published data.

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