“…Even if the kesterite CZTSSe solar cell has achieved a record PCE of 12.6% by adopting hydrazine based deposition [5], the issues associated with secondary phases, defect and band grading have imposed challenges to progress the CZTSSe thin film solar cell competitive to CIGS solar cell device [3,4]. For the sake of alternative absorber layer, a member of Cu-based quaternary chalcogenide family Cu 2 FeSnS 4 (Se 4 ) (CFTS (Se)) [6] has been considered as a promising candidate due to earth abundant constituents and similar structural and optical properties to CZTSSe [2,4,7,8]. Recently, a number of researches have been carried out on CFTS (Se) materials and reported to have optical band gaps, 1.28-1.50 eV for CFTS [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] and 1.10-1.25 eV for CFTSe [17][18][19] suitable for absorber layer in photovoltaic application.…”