Effect of annealing on structural, optical, and electrical properties of nickel (Ni)/indium tin oxide (ITO) nanostructures prepared by RF magnetron sputtering

•Successfully deposited nickel/indium tin oxide (Ni/ITO) nanostructure on silicon (111) and glass substrate using RF magnetron sputtering.•The growth temperature of ITO needs to exceed 200°C to get a better crystallinity.•Nickel acts as a catalyst during the deposition of ITO.•Increasing the annealing temperature will increase the grain size and carrier concentration of Ni/ITO nanostructures.•The lowest resistivity which is 1.09×10−6Ωcm was achieved at 650°C of annealing temperature. Nickel (Ni)/indium tin oxide (ITO) nanostructures were deposited on glass and silicon (111) substrates by RF magnetron sputtering using nickel and ITO (In–Sn, 90–10%) targets. The post-deposition annealing has been performed for Ni/ITO films in air. The effect of annealing temperature on the electrical, optical and structural properties of ITO films was studied. We found the appearance of (622) peak in addition to (400) and (222) major peaks, which indicates an enhancement of the film crystallinity at high temperature annealing of 650°C. The samples show higher transmittance of more than 90% at 470nm after annealing which is suitable for blue light emitting diode (LED) application. The optical energy bandgap is shifted from 3.51 to 3.65eV for the Ni/ITO film after annealing at 650°C. In addition, increasing the annealing temperature improves the film electrical properties. The resistivity value decreases from 3.77×10−5Ωcm to 1.09×10−6Ωcm upon increasing annealing temperature.