Supplementary information for Facile fabrication of highly conductive and dense indium tin oxide targets by cold sintering assisted process

Supplementary information for Yu, T., Bao, X., Sun, B., Zhou, Z., & Zhang, H. (2025). Facile fabrication of highly conductive and dense indium tin oxide targets by cold sintering assisted process. Materials Today Communications, 114458Article abstractIndium tin oxide (ITO) ceramic sputtering targets are widely used to produce electrically conductive transparent thin films for various optoelectronic devices. However, it is challenging to produce high quality targets due to the poor sinterability of ITO powders. Conventional sintering of polycrystalline ITO ceramics is prevalently performed at very high temperatures (1550–1650 °C) for very long time (10 h) in an oxygen atmosphere. Here, we produced ITO targets with high density and low resistivity by cold sintering assisted process at reduced sintering temperature and time. ITO ceramics were first prepared via cold sintering process (CSP) at 250 °C for 1 h. As-CSPed samples consisted of nanocrystalline grains and amorphous phase. Subsequently, post-annealing was conducted in air at 1400 °C for 4 h to facilitate both crystallisation of the amorphous phase and densification. For comparison, ITO ceramics were also produced by conventional sintering at the identical condition (1400 °C for 4 h). The samples produced by cold sintering assisted process exhibited much higher density of 98.6 % and lower resistivity of 3.63 × 10−4 Ω·cm than the corresponding values (63.4 % and 2.10 × 10−3 Ω·cm) from conventionally sintered samples. These optimal properties attained from this work are comparable to the best reported values for bulk ITO ceramics so far. More importantly, such a high performance is achieved by a cost-effective processing route without atmospheric control and sintering aids. Thus, our results demonstrate the potential of alternative densification strategy for facile fabrication of high-quality ITO targets.© the authors

本补充信息对应Yu T、Bao X、Sun B、Zhou Z与Zhang H于2025年发表于《今日材料通讯（Materials Today Communications）》的研究论文《冷烧结辅助工艺便捷制备高导电致密氧化铟锡靶材》，文章编号：114458。
【文章摘要】
氧化铟锡（indium tin oxide, ITO）陶瓷溅射靶材被广泛用于制备各类光电子器件所需的导电透明薄膜。然而，由于氧化铟锡粉体的烧结性能不佳，制备高质量靶材仍颇具挑战。传统多晶氧化铟锡陶瓷烧结通常需在极高温度（1550~1650 ℃）、氧气气氛下长时间（10 h）保温方可完成。本研究通过冷烧结辅助工艺，在降低烧结温度与时长的前提下，制备出高密度低电阻率的氧化铟锡靶材。
研究人员首先通过冷烧结工艺（cold sintering process, CSP）在250 ℃下保温1 h制备氧化铟锡陶瓷，经冷烧结制备的样品由纳米晶晶粒与非晶相组成。随后在空气气氛中1400 ℃下保温4 h进行后退火处理，以促进非晶相晶化与样品致密化。为便于对比，本研究同时以相同条件（1400 ℃保温4 h）通过常规烧结工艺制备氧化铟锡陶瓷。
结果表明，采用冷烧结辅助工艺制备的样品密度可达98.6%，电阻率低至3.63×10⁻⁴ Ω·cm，远优于常规烧结样品的对应性能（密度63.4%，电阻率2.10×10⁻³ Ω·cm）。本研究获得的最优性能可与目前已报道的块体氧化铟锡陶瓷最佳性能相媲美。更重要的是，该高性能通过无需气氛控制与烧结助剂的低成本工艺路线即可实现。综上，本研究结果证明了替代致密化策略在便捷制备高质量氧化铟锡靶材方面的应用潜力。
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