Fabrication and transport properties of thermally evaporated cadmium selenide thin films for photovoltaic applications

Tin mono selenide (SnSe) with an energy gap of about 1 eV is a potential material for photovoltaic applications. Various authors have studied the structure, electronic and photoelectronic properties of thin films of SnSe grown by various deposition techniques. However, for practical photovoltaic junctions the electrical properties of SnSe films need improvement. We have carried out investigations into the properties of flash evaporated SnSe films. In this paper we report our results on the structure, which plays a dominant role on the electrical properties of thin films by TEM, SEM, and electron diffraction (ED).Thin films of SnSe were deposited by flash evaporation of SnSe fine powder prepared from high purity Sn and Se, onto glass, mica and KCl substrates in a vacuum of 2Ø micro Torr. A 15% HF + 2Ø% HNO3 solution was used to detach SnSe film from the glass and mica substrates whereas the film deposited on KCl substrate was floated over an ethanol water mixture by dissolution of KCl. The floating films were picked up on the grids for their EM analysis.

Download Full-text

Wide Band-Gap Kesterite Thin Films for Photovoltaic Applications

10.29363/nanoge.fallmeeting.2018.154 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Raquel Caballero ◽

Leonor de la Cueva ◽

Andrea Ruiz-Perona ◽

Yudenia Sánchez ◽

Markus Neuschitzer ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Thin Films ◽

Band Gap ◽

Wide Band ◽

Wide Band Gap ◽

Photovoltaic Applications

Download Full-text

Stoichiometry control and electronic and transport properties of pyrochlore Bi2Ir2O7 thin films

Physical Review Materials ◽

10.1103/physrevmaterials.2.114206 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 2 (11) ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

W. C. Yang ◽

Y. T. Xie ◽

X. Sun ◽

X. H. Zhang ◽

K. Park ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Thin Films ◽

Transport Properties ◽

Stoichiometry Control

Download Full-text

Fabrication, micro-structure characteristics and transport properties of co-evaporated thin films of Bi2Te3 on AlN coated stainless steel foils

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-83476-7 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Aziz Ahmed ◽

Seungwoo Han

Keyword(s):

Thin Film ◽

Crystal Structure ◽

Thin Films ◽

Stainless Steel ◽

Substrate Temperature ◽

Transport Properties ◽

Structural Defects ◽

Film Composition ◽

High Substrate ◽

Foil Substrate

AbstractN-type bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3) thin films were prepared on an aluminum nitride (AlN)-coated stainless steel foil substrate to obtain optimal thermoelectric performance. The thermal co-evaporation method was adopted so that we could vary the thin film composition, enabling us to investigate the relationship between the film composition, microstructure, crystal preferred orientation and thermoelectric properties. The influence of the substrate temperature was also investigated by synthesizing two sets of thin film samples; in one set the substrate was kept at room temperature (RT) while in the other set the substrate was maintained at a high temperature, of 300 °C, during deposition. The samples deposited at RT were amorphous in the as-deposited state and therefore were annealed at 280 °C to promote crystallization and phase development. The electrical resistivity and Seebeck coefficient were measured and the results were interpreted. Both the transport properties and crystal structure were observed to be strongly affected by non-stoichiometry and the choice of substrate temperature. We observed columnar microstructures with hexagonal grains and a multi-oriented crystal structure for the thin films deposited at high substrate temperatures, whereas highly (00 l) textured thin films with columns consisting of in-plane layers were fabricated from the stoichiometric annealed thin film samples originally synthesized at RT. Special emphasis was placed on examining the nature of tellurium (Te) atom based structural defects and their influence on thin film properties. We report maximum power factor (PF) of 1.35 mW/m K2 for near-stoichiometric film deposited at high substrate temperature, which was the highest among all studied cases.

Download Full-text