Effect of nature of dopants on electronic and optical properties of indium tin oxide

Indium oxide is a transparent and wide band gap semiconductor. The optical and electrical properties of this oxide material can be engineered by appropriate doping. The substantial increase in conductivity while preserving the optical transparency has been achieved by suitable extrinsic n-type doping. Tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) is one of the most widely used transparent conductors. The indium used in ITO is very expensive therefore attempts have been made to reduce the usage of indium without degrading its opto-electronic property and therefore suitable dopant is required. We performed the electronic structure calculations based on density functional theory to understand the effect of the magnetic and non-magnetic impurities on the electronic structure and consequently the optical property of indium tin oxide. Our calculations show that the optoelectronic properties of antimony-doped indium tin oxide (AITO) are in good agreement with the experimental observations having with 85% transmittance and may be a suitable dopant. Whereas, doping with the 3d transition metal ‘cobalt’ in ITO produces magnetic character of system without significantly degrading the optical property in visible region. Moreover, the transmittance increases for Co-doped ITO in infrared region. Such merger of different cross-properties has potential application for future multifunctional devices.