A study of ternary Cu₂SnS₃ and Cu₃SnS₄ thin films prepared by sulfurizing stacked metal precursors

Abstract

Abstract:Thin film Cu 2 SnS 3 and Cu 3 SnS 4 were grown by sulfurization of dc-magnetron sputtered Sn-Cu metallic precursors in a S 2 atmosphere. Different maximum sulfurization temperatures were tested which allowed the study of the Cu 2 SnS 3 phase changes. For a temperature of 350 ºC the films were constituted by tetragonal (I-42m) Cu 2 SnS 3 . The films sulfurized at a maximum temperature of 400 ºC presented a cubic (F-43m) Cu 2 SnS 3 phase. Increasing the temperature up to 520 ºC, the Sn content of the layer lowered and orthorhombic (Pmn21) Cu 3 SnS 4 was formed.The phase identification and structural analysis was performed using X-ray Diffraction (XRD) and Electron Back-Scattered Diffraction (EBSD) analysis. Raman scattering analysis was also performed and the comparison with XRD and EBSD data allowed the assignment of peaks at

Study of polycrystalline Cu2ZnSnS4 films by Raman scattering

“…Among the different Cu x SnS x+1 (CTS) phases, the ones that may be formed during the growth of CZTS are tetragonalCu 2 SnS 3 , cubic-Cu 2 SnS 3 and orthorhombic-Cu 3 SnS 4 [2,12]. From these, only the orthorhombic-Cu 3 SnS 4 is easy to identify using XRD.…”

“…The cubic and the tetragonal have the same problem as ZnS, which is the unit cell sizes are quite similar to the CZTS ones. For the cubic phase, the a constant is 5.430 Å whereas for the tetragonal a has the value 5.413 Å with c taking the value of 10.824 Å [12]. The peak proximity for CZTS and CTS compounds are also presented in Table 1.…”

“…The experimental procedure described in the section is based in previously published work [2,[10][11][12][13], except for the growth of the cubic-ZnS phase.…”

Fabrication of solar cells based on Cu2ZnSnS4prepared from Cu2SnS3synthesized using a novel chemical procedure

“…The CZTS sample exhibits a dominant peak located around 339 cm −1 , which has been attributed to the Cu 2 ZnSnS 4 phase [21]; considering that this peak is quite narrow it could be argued that there is no clear evidence of the formation of secondary phases. The CTS film exhibit Raman peaks at 304 and 350 cm −1 ; these peaks have been assigned by other authors to the A symmetry vibrational modes from the tetragonal Cu 2 SnS 3 phase [23][24][25][26], indicating that the method developed, allows to grow thin films containing only the Cu 2 SnS 3 phase.…”

“…In Figure 7a are shown typical XRD spectra corresponding to both Cu 2 SnS 3 and Cu 2 ZnSnS 4 thin films. From the XRD pattern obtained for the CTS sample, it can be observed the presence of reflections along the planes (112), (204) that have been assigned to the Cu 2 SnS 3 phase with a tetragonal structure (ICDD data file # 01-089-4714) [23]. The XRD patterns of the CZTS thin film exhibit Bragg peaks of (112), (204/220), (116/312) that according to the JCPDS data file # 26-0575 can be assigned to the diffraction lines of CZTS with a kesterite structure [24].…”