Copper tin sulfide semiconductor thin films produced by heating SnS–CuS layers deposited from chemical bath

Abstract

Copper tin sulfide (Cu 4 SnS 4 ) thin films have been prepared by heating a layer of CuS thin film deposited over an SnS thin film, both obtained by chemical bath deposition. Upon heating in a nitrogen atmosphere at 300-340 • C, the CuS layer converts to Cu 8 S 5 , which reacts with the underlying SnS thin film at about 400 • C to form Cu 4 SnS 4 . The optical band gap of Cu 4 SnS 4 has been found to be approximately 1 eV, involving direct forbidden transitions. The films are photosensitive, and the electrical conductivity in the dark is about 1 −1 cm −1 .

Influence of Deposition Time on Structural and Optical Properties of Chemically Deposited SnS Thin Films

“…With increase in deposition time the direct forbidden band gap found to decrease from 1.44 eV to 1.32 eV. These values are in the range observed earlier [43] (a) (c) (b) but higher than those observed by other researchers [11,49,52] for SnS films deposited by CBD. The direct forbidden gap of the order of 1.7 eV have been reported for SnS films prepared by CBD with orthorhombic [49] and zinc blende structures [11,40,46] and also for SnS films prepared by successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) method [61].…”

“…For the deposition of thin films of SnS various methods like spray pyrolysis [4][5][6][7][8][9][10], electrodeposition [11][12][13][14][15][16][17], chemical vapor deposition [18][19][20], magnetron sputtering [21], successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) [22], vacuum evaporation [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34], brush plating [35][36], microwave assisted chemical deposition [37] and chemical bath deposition (CBD) [38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52]…”

Thickness-Dependent Physical Properties of Coevaporated Cu4SnS4 Films

“…The crystal structure was evaluated to be orthorhombic. Nair et al [17] also observed a similar behavior with the (311) plane as preferred orientation in Cu 4 SnS 4 films formed by heating SnS-CuS layers grown by chemical bath deposition method.…”

Flower-like Nanostructured ZnO for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell Applications

“…Glass substrates were chemically pretreated to grow a layer of SnS to serve as seed layer for the subsequent ZnS film deposition. SnS film growth was prepared from chemical bath of 1g SnCl2 2H2O dissolved in 5ml acetone as the tin source, thioacetamide (TA) [CH3CSNH2] (1 mol/L, 8ml) as S 2-source, triethanolamine (TEA) [(HOCH2CH2)3N] (12ml, 50% as a chelating agent, NH4OH (10ml, 4mol/L) as pH adjuster and second chelating agent [10] . The deionized H2O was add to the mixture to make it 100ml.…”