Effects of Post Annealing Temperatures on Sputtered Indium Tin Oxide Films for the Application to Resistive Touch Panel

Abstract

Indium tin oxide (ITO) films were deposited on glass substrates by in-line DC sputtering and were annealed at different temperatures in the main chamber of sputter. The post-annealing effects on the optical and electrical properties of the ITO films were investigated and analyzed by various measurement systems. The results show that a higher annealing temperature makes an improvement on the electro-optical properties of the ITO films. The resistivity of the ITO films was reduced from 8.90×10⁻⁴Ω·cm to 2.91×10⁻⁴Ω·cm and the transmittance was increased from about 76.91% to 82.15% after post annealing at 300 °C in vacuum. The post annealed ITO glass was used in the fabrication of resistive touch panel and it was possible to obtain the better linearity characteristics than those from the touch panel fabricated with non-annealed ITO glass.

Keywords:

• Indium tin oxide (ITO)
• in-line DC sputtering
• linearity
• post-annealing
• resistive touch panel

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the Korean Research Foundation (KRF) grant funded by the Korean government (MEST) (No. 2012R1A1A2042186). The fabrication of the resistive touch panel was supported by the Meeredp Incorporation.