Dominant acceptors in Li doped, magnetron deposited Cu2O films

Cu2O films deposited by reactive magnetron sputtering with varying Li concentrations have been investigated by a combination of temperature-dependent Hall effect measurement and thermal admittance spectroscopy. As measured by secondary ion mass spectrometry, Li concentrations up to 5x1020 Li/cm3 have been achieved. Li doping significantly alters the electrical properties of Cu2O and increases hole concentration at room temperature for higher Li concentrations. Moreover, the apparent activation energy for the dominant acceptors decreases from around 0.2 eV for undoped or lightly doped Cu2O down to as low as 0.05 eV for higher Li concentrations.

Light-Assisted Batch Injection Analysis of Glucose Exploiting a p-n-Homojunction Based on Cu2O

This work describes the development of a photoelectrochemical sensor for glucose quantification exploiting a light assisted-batch injection analysis (BIA) cell. A light-emitting diode (LED) lamp was employed to control the incidence of light on the p-Cu2O/n-Cu2O/fluorine-doped tin oxide(FTO) photoactive platform in BIA cell. The p-Cu2O/n-Cu2O/FTO platform was constructed by electrodepositing n-Cu2O and p-Cu2O and the characteristics of electrodeposited Cu2O films were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The light assisted-batch injection analysis of glucose based on the illuminated p-Cu2O/n-Cu2O/FTO photoelectrode presented a linear response of 10 μmol L-1 mmol L-1, a limit of detection of 4.0 μmol L-1, and sensitivity of 0.768 ± 0.011 μA L μmol-1 cm-2. The system presented an average recovery value of 96% when applied to the determination of glucose in an artificial saliva sample, which indicates that the incidence of light on photoelectroactive platforms is a promising approach for the determination and quantification of glucose.

Study on the Physical Properties of Pulsed Laser Deposited Doped Copper Oxide (Cu2 O) Thin Films for Optical Device Applications

Cuprous oxide, (Cu2O) is a promising p-type semiconductor, finds practical applications in a wide range of optoelectronic devices. In this paper, pulsed laser deposition technique is employed to deposit doped Cu2O thin films. The influence of doping of silver (Ag), aluminium (Al) and co-doping of (Ag+Al) in Cu2O thin films is illustrated. X-ray diffraction pattern depicts cubic crystal structure and polycrystalline nature of grown thin films, having small crystallite size (~50 nm). Atomic force microscopy (AFM) obtained surface images of the films portrait uniform grain morphology with low surface roughness. The room temperature optical characterizations of the thin films, the transmittance versus wavelength in the UV-Visible region exhibits low transmission values upto 10–20%, illustrates the large absorption coefficient (α), numerical values varying from 104 to 105cm-1 for doped Cu2O films. The large values of absorption coefficient facilitate the optical and photovoltaic applications of the doped Cu2O films. The addition of dopant species Ag and Al, the optical band gap is increased and it varies in the range of 2.65−2.84 eV. The increased energy gap is attributed to the substitution of Al and Ag ions for the oxygen ions reduce the width of valence band to widen the energy gap. The I−V characteristics plot obtained at room temperature indicates low electrical resistivity (ρ ~ 10-2Ω- cm) of the films. The obtained results are of high relevance and indicate potential applications of the grown thin films in semiconductor devices such as solar cells, photodetectors and optical sources

Structural behavior of RF magnetron sputtered cuprous oxide (Cu2O) films

In this paper a Cu2O thin films, were deposited using RF sputtering technique. Sputtering process can be defined as ejection atoms of material surface due to positive ions bombardment of (mostly) inert gas, sometimes called cathode sputtering. Then the thin films were characterized by XRD. The results obtained showed that, the thin films had a polycrystalline structure with cubic lattice unit cell. strongest peak was seen at 61.3967 degree, and FWHM was at 0.215 degree, while lattice constant was 4.26 Aº. The average grain size was 44.87 nm. While AFM analysis showed that the increasing of four samples temperature (523, 573, 623 and 673) Kelvin, led to increase of roughness average from (3.39 to 9.2) nm, and ten points height from (13.7 to 36.3). On the other hand granularity cumulation distribution charts showed that the average diameter was varied from (43.31 to 51.28) nm with grain numbers ( 739, to 414) respectively

Transparent Conductive p-Type Cuprous Oxide Films in Vis-NIR Region Prepared by Ion-Beam Assisted DC Reactive Sputtering

Cu2O thin film has been widely studied due to its intrinsic p-type conductivity. It can be used as p-type transparent conductive electrode or hole transport layer in various potential applications. However, its intrinsic p-type conductivity is very limited, which needs to be optimized by introducing acceptor defects. In this work, the electrical properties of the Cu2O films was improved through introducing interstitial oxygen in the films those were deposited via direct current sputtering assisted by oxygen ion beam. The results show that with oxygen ion beam current increase, the carrier concentration effectively improves. However, with more interstitial oxygen introduced, the film’s crystallinity significantly reduces, as well as the carrier mobility decreases. Meanwhile, all of the Cu2O films present moderate transmittance in the visible region (400–800 nm), but ideal transmittance in the near infrared (NIR) light region (800–2500 nm). When compared with the strong reflection of the n-type transparent conductive film to the near infrared light, the Cu2O film is transparent conductive in NIR region, which expands its application in the fabrication of NIR electrical devices.