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Fabrication and characterization of copper based semiconducting materials for optoelectronic applications

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Abstract

The copper based semiconductors have now proved to the most promising solar cell material nowadays among all the available p type semiconducting materials. Present work deals with fabrication of thin film layer of CuO and CuS material on to a glass substrate by physical vapour deposition method. The structural, surface morphological, compositional, optical and electrical characterization of the fabricated thin films is to be carried out with the help of X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray, UV–visible spectrophotometer and I–V characterization respectively confirms the formation of CuO and CuS film on glass substrate.The structural property of CuO and CuS are obtained from XRD pattern. Both CuO and CuS material obtained are of crystalline nature with monolithic and hexagonal structure respectively. The surface morphology of CuO films shows that as the temperature increases, the fabricated film shows prominent granular texture and CuS film surface shows flower like texture. The optical band gap of CuO varies from 1.56 to 1.78 eV as the temperature decrease from 450 °C to 350 °C. The band gap of CuS lies within the range of 2.50 eV. The contact resistivity and bulk resistivity of CuO sample (S1) is 7.3 × 10–4 Ω m2 and 2.4 × 10–4 Ω m respectively. The contact resistivity and bulk resistivity of CuS sample (S4) is 5.1 × 10–4 Ω m2 and 1.27 × 10–4 Ω m respectively. The I–V characteristics curve of CuO and CuS obtained shows the semiconducting behaviour of the thin film formed; both in the forward bias and reverse bias region.

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Abbreviations

EDX:

Energy dispersive X-ray

TLM:

Transmission line measurement

XRD:

X-ray diffraction

SEM:

Scanning electron microscope

CuS:

Copper sulphide

SPV:

Solar photo voltaic

CuO:

Copper oxide

PVD:

Physical vapour deposition

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Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to School of Energy Studies, Jadavpur University of Kolkata (West Bengal) for its support during this work.

Funding

No funding was received for conducting this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Energy Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, 700032, WB, India

    Poulami Dutta & Ratan Mandal

  2. Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Cambridge Institute of Technology, Ranchi, India

    Sumanta Bhattacharyya

  3. Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Brainware Group of Institutions-SDET, Kolkata, India

    Rajesh Dey

  4. Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, National Institute of Technology Mizoram, Aizawl, Mizoram, 796012, India

    Rudra Sankar Dhar

Authors
  1. Poulami Dutta
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  2. Ratan Mandal
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  3. Sumanta Bhattacharyya
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  4. Rajesh Dey
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  5. Rudra Sankar Dhar
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Contributions

Both the authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by PD. The first draft of the manuscript was written by RM and both the authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ratan Mandal or Sumanta Bhattacharyya.

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Dutta, P., Mandal, R., Bhattacharyya, S. et al. Fabrication and characterization of copper based semiconducting materials for optoelectronic applications. Microsyst Technol 27, 3475–3482 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-020-05145-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-020-05145-5

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