Influence of Vanadium substitution on electronic, thermoelectric and optical response of Cu₂O

Abstract

Cu2O semiconductor attained much research interest due to excellent electronic and optical response. In this work, Vanadium-doped Cu2O compositions were studied for electronic, thermoelectric, and optical response using density functional theory. The thin films were experimentally fabricated using the chemically derived spin coating method. The X-ray diffraction analysis revealed the growth of crystalline thin films with cubic structure having space-group 224-Pn-3m. The scanning electron micrographs exhibit the uniform grain growth with well-defined grain boundaries for pure Cu2O films. Density of states spectra display the maxima for O-2p and Cu-3d while V-3d states occupied the conduction band. The value of the experimental band gap for pure Cu2O is estimated as 2.02 eV and found to decrease with V-doping. The Seebeck coefficient and specific heat are found to increase with the increment in V-doping content due to thermal fluctuations. A steady increase is observed in real epsilon with the increase in energy and dopant concentration.

Cu2O/CuO composite for efficient performance in photoelectrochemical and optoelectronics applications

“…However, the main drawback of Cu 2 O as a photocathode is its poor stability in electrolytes and the fast recombination of generated charge carriers. Hence, a lot of efforts have been made to enhance optoelectronics properties and PEC performance with its stability such as covering its surface with a layer that serves as a protected layer [25,26], doping [27,28], and fabrication of heterojunction with n-type semiconductors such as WO 3 [29,30] and ZnO [31]. Some efforts have done to enhance Cu 2 O PEC performance by annealing as-grown film, which was deposited by different methods with various parameters [32][33][34][35].…”