Preparation of fluorine-doped tin oxide (SnO2:F) film on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate

Fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO), one of the most popular transparent conductive oxide (TCO) materials, coated on glass has been used in various applications including many new-generation solar cells. However, there is a lack of reporting when it comes to FTO coated on flexible transparent substrate. For this paper, spray pyrolysis technique was used to have FTO firstly coated on to a brass substrate, which was then dissolved away after cementing an upper flexible transparent polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate, finally leaving high quality FTO film on PET substrate. Their structural, electrical, optical and flexible properties were investigated. The lowest resistivity was 7.6 × 10^− 4 Ω cm, which is as good as conventional FTO deposited on glass. Their fold ability could be significantly improved to transcend commercial ITO/PET only by increasing the pretreating time of the brass substrate.