Influence of Different Solvents on the Formation of Uniform Titanium Dioxide (TiO 2) Thin Film by Sol-Gel

Abstract

Uniform Titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) thin film is essential for application in high performance solar cells. A low cost approach using TiO 2 nanopowder extracted from tin mining waste to deposit TiO 2 thin films is demonstrated in this paper. Furthermore, the influence of different solvents (ethanol, acetone, isopropanol and ethylene glycol) on the formation of uniform TiO 2 thin films in sol-gel technique is studied. The films were characterized by an atomic force microscope (AFM), ultra violet – visible spectrometer (UV-Vis) and a current-voltage ( I-V ) measurement system. The correlations of the structural, optical and electrical behavior to the type of solvent used were discussed in details.