Preparation and photoelectric properties of Ag micro-grid modified ITO films

In this paper, the technology of polystyrene (PS) microsphere template and DC magnetron sputtering was utilized to conduct surface-modification on In₂O₃:Sn(ITO) films with the micro-grid of Ag in order to get periodic surface structure on the ITO films. This paper studied the effects of the diameter of the PS microspheres and the sputtering time on the surface morphology, transmittance in UV-Visible range, diffuse reflectance and conductive properties of the modified ITO films. Both the experiments and analyses showed that the modification of the ITO film with Ag micro-grid under the optimized conditions will improve the conductive properties of the films to the maximum of 19.5%, and its diffuse reflectance properties to 200%, with the decrease of the transmittance in visible region less than 10%, and with 2 μm diameters of polymer microspheres and 30 s sputtering time. This will help improving the light trapping effect of solar cells using ITO films as transparent electrodes.