Investigation of UV photosensor properties of Al-doped SnO2 thin films deposited by sol-gel dip-coating method

Abstract Transparent conducting aluminum doped tin oxide thin films were prepared by sol-gel dip coating method with different Al concentrations and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), UV–Vis spectrophotometry and photoconductivity study. The variation observed in the properties of the measured films agrees with a difference in the film's thickness, which decreases when Al concentration augments. X-ray diffraction analysis reveals that all films are polycrystalline with tetragonal structure, (110) plane being the strongest diffraction peak. The crystallite size calculated by the Debye Scherrer’s formula decreases from 11.92 to 8.54 nm when Al concentration increases from 0 to 5 wt.%. AFM images showed grains uniformly distributed in the deposited films. An average transmittance greater than 80% was measured for the films and an energy gap value of about 3.9 eV was deduced from the optical analysis. Finally, the photosensitivity properties like current–voltage characteristics, I ON / I OFF ratio, growth and decay time are studied and reported. Also, we have calculated the trap depth energy using the decay portion of the rise and decay curve photocurrent.