Thermodynamic energy variation diagram to speculate preferred growth orientation of magnetron sputtered PbSe thin films on monocrystalline silicon substrates

Photoconductive PbSe thin films for infrared imaging

“…102 Sun et al acknowledged, ''the optical and photoelectric properties of PbSe thin-films are intensely affected by the crystal structure which is mainly determined by the growth process.'' 103 Sun reported results from a thermodynamic simulation, confirmed with experimental results, the optical characteristics of PbSe grain grown via PVD on different substrates. Sun deposited PbSe on monocrystalline silicon substrates of (100) and ( 111) orientation.…”

Lead Selenide Polycrystalline Coatings Sensitized Using Diffusion and Ion Beam Methods for Uncooled Mid-Infrared Photodetection

“…Another reason is alkaline earth metal fluorides are transparent (~95% transmittance) in a wide range of 0.2-12 μm [84]. Figure 11a-c shows the PbSe polycrystalline film coated by a 200 nm thick CaF2 flower-like nanostructured coating with a tapered shape, which may be attributed to the predominant growth at the (111) plane according to the lowest surface energy mechanism [45,46]. It was revealed that light propagation will be bent by the sub-wavelength…”

“…Another reason is alkaline earth metal fluorides are transparent (~95% transmittance) in a wide range of 0.2-12 µm [84]. Figure 11a-c shows the PbSe polycrystalline film coated by a 200 nm thick CaF 2 flower-like nanostructured coating with a tapered shape, which may be attributed to the predominant growth at the (111) plane according to the lowest surface energy mechanism [45,46]. It was revealed that light propagation will be bent by the sub-wavelength dimensional tapered structure to improve the light collection efficiency due to the induced gradient refractive index profile and a convergence effect as convex optical lens [85][86][87][88][89], as shown in Figure 11d.…”

“…Growth mechanism on the morphological evolution, preferred growth orientation, the surface energy minimization, and defect formation, as well as the relation with the influencing factors such as preparation conditions, is another interesting area, which can be important to understand the crystal growth mechanism and effectively control the repeatability and reliability of the preparation technology. Recently, the growth mechanism of evaporated PbSe based on the Gibbs free energy variation minimization was calculated via DFT by Sun et al, which explained the preferred growth orientation of (200) for evaporated PbSe film on the Si substrate [45,46]. This is a good beginning for understanding the growth mechanism of PbSe polycrystalline material.…”

“…Various fabrication methods, including chemical bath deposition (CBD) [33], electrochemical deposition [34,35], thermal evaporation [13,36], electron beam evaporation (EBE) [37], molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) [38,39] and RF magnetron sputtering [40,41], as well as other preparation methods [42,43], have been adopted to prepare PbSe nanocrystalline and polycrystalline coatings. Likewise, great efforts have been devoted to the structural, compositional, optical, electrical, and optoelectronic properties of this material, as well as the relevant physical mechanisms such as crystal growth and carrier transport [44][45][46][47]. Among these, high performance infrared-sensitive photodetectors based on the quantum dot [29,30], polycrystalline [48,49], and composite material [50], as well as the relevant heterojunctions [51], have attracted wider attention.…”