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Effect of annealing temperature on SnS thin films for photodetector applications

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Abstract

Tin sulfide (SnS) thin films were deposited at room temperature (RT) by thermal evaporation method and subsequently annealed at 150–350 °C in N2 atmosphere. The influence of annealing temperature on composition, structural, morphological and optical properties of the thin films has been investigated. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis and Raman studies confirmed the formation of single phase SnS films at RT and annealed up to 300 °C. The crystallite size increased from 24 nm for as-deposited film to 37 nm for the 300 °C annealed film and further reduced to 18 nm for the 350 °C annealed film. The film annealed at 200 °C was found to have better morphological features with (111) preferred oriented crystallites. The absorption coefficient, optical band gap (Eg) of the deposited films were estimated from the optical transmittance measurements. Photodetectors are fabricated by depositing Ag contacts on SnS thin films using a metal mask and photo response was tested under dark and illumination conditions using 532 nm laser of varying power intensities. The photodetectors performance is evaluated using responsivity (R), external quantum efficiency (EQE), and specific detectivity (D*). The specific detectivity of 6.8 × 1010 Jones obtained in the present study is nearly two orders of magnitude greater than that reported earlier.

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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

Authors would like to thank the Department of Physics, Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE), IISc, Bengaluru, Karnataka, 560012 India for providing fabrication and characterization facilities. Ehab El Sayed Massoud would like to express his gratitude to the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia, for funding part of this work through Research Groups Program under Grant No. R.G.P.2/70/42.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560012, India

    Devarajan Alagarasan, Sathiya Priya Panjalingam & R. Ganesan

  2. Department of Physics, CMR Institute of Technology, Bengaluru, 560037, India

    S. S. Hegde

  3. Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560012, India

    S. Varadharajaperumal

  4. PG & Research Department of Physics, Arul Anandar College, Karumathu, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, 625514, India

    K. Deva Arun Kumar

  5. Department of Engineering and Materials Physics, Institute of Chemical Technology-Indian Oil Odisha Campus, Bhubaneswar, 751013, India

    R. Naik

  6. Biology Department, Faculty of Science and Arts in Dahran Aljnoub, King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia

    Ehab El Sayed Massoud

  7. Research Center for Advanced Materials Science (RCAMS), King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia

    Ehab El Sayed Massoud

  8. Agriculture Research Centre, Soil, Water and Environment Research Institute, Giza, Egypt

    Ehab El Sayed Massoud

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  1. Devarajan Alagarasan
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Contributions

DA: original draft, Software, Data curation, Investigation. SSH: Visualization, Experiments. SV: Experiments. KDAK: Visualization, Experiments. RN: Visualization, Methodology, Experiments. SPP: Experiments. MEESM: Experiments. RG: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing—review & editing, Supervision.

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Correspondence to Devarajan Alagarasan or R. Ganesan.

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Alagarasan, D., Hegde, S.S., Varadharajaperumal, S. et al. Effect of annealing temperature on SnS thin films for photodetector applications. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 33, 4794–4805 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-021-07668-7

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