Antimony-Doped Tin(II) Sulfide Thin Films

Abstract

Thin-film solar cells made from earth-abundant, inexpensive, and non-toxic materials are needed to replace the current technologies whose widespread use is limited by their use of scarce, costly, and toxic elements. 1 Tin monosulfide (SnS) is a promising candidate for making absorber layers in scalable, inexpensive, and non-toxic solar cells. SnS has always been observed to be a p-type semiconductor. Doping SnS to form an n-type semiconductor would permit the construction of solar cells with p-n homojunctions. This paper reports doping SnS films with antimony, a potential n-type dopant. Small amounts of antimony (~1%) were found to greatly increase the electrical resistance of the SnS. The resulting intrinsic SnS(Sb) films could be used for the insulating layer in a p-i-n design for solar cells. Higher concentrations (~5%) of antimony did not convert the SnS(Sb) to low-resistivity n-type conductivity, but instead the films retain such a high resistance that the conductivity type could not be determined. Extended X-ray absorption fine structure analysis reveals that the highly doped films contain precipitates of a secondary phase that has chemical bonds characteristic of metallic antimony, rather than the antimony-sulfur bonds found in films with lower concentrations of antimony.

Vapor deposition of copper(I) bromide films via a two-step conversion process

“…Pulsed-CVD was chosen as the deposition method for its accelerated growth rate relative to ALD. 26 XPS survey spectra reveal that depositions conducted between 120 °C and 180 °C produced films containing solely copper and sulfur, whereas films deposited at 100 °C or 200 °C also contain carbon (Fig. S2 in Supplementary Materials).…”

Optoelectronic properties of single-layer, double-layer, and bulk tin sulfide: A theoretical study

“…Although theory indicates that the efficiency of solar cells based on SnS could match that of CIGS and CdTe-based cells, in practice much lower efficiencies have been achieved (<2%), leaving room for improvement in the absorber and the design of the PV device. 13,[16][17][18][19][20] General strategies for tuning the properties of the material, also relevant to the fabrication of novel electronic devices, include the use of atomically thin compounds [21][22][23][24] and the application of mechanical strain. [25][26][27] SnS has been extensively investigated in its bulk form [28][29][30][31][32][33][34] but few-layer and single-layer structures remain largely unexplored.…”

Structural and optoelectronic properties of alloyed SnxMn1−xS thin films

“…Avellaneda et al [13] synthesized polymorphic zinc blende and orthorhombic thin films of SnS by chemical deposition. Sinsermsuksakul et al [24] recently studied the effects of antimony doping (1-5%) in the pulsed-CVD synthesis of SnS thin films in an effort to reduce the hole concentration and change the conduction type (p to n) for future utilization in the construction of SnS thin film solar cells with p-n homo junctions. Herein, we report the synthesis of SnS nanocrystals doped with different concentrations of Mn and utilize thin films of these materials as photoelectrodes for water splitting.…”