Chemically Deposited Sb2 S 3 and Sb2 S 3 ‐ CuS Thin Films

Abstract

Thin films of antimony sulfide have been deposited from chemical baths containing antimony trichloride and sodium thiosulfate maintained at 10°C. Upon annealing in nitrogen at 300°C for 1 h, the films become photosensitive with photo-to dark-current ratio of two to three orders of magnitude at 2 kW m2 tungsten halogen radiation. The annealed films are crystalline with an X-ray diffraction pattern matching that of stibnite, 5b753, (JCPDS 6-0474) and show an optical bandgap of 1.78 eV. Deposition of a thin film of CuS on the antimony sulfide thin film and subsequent annealing in nitrogen at 250°C for 1 h produces films with acceptable solar control characteristics: integrated visible transmittance, 15%; integrated visible reflectance, 12%; integrated infrared transmittance, Tir, 14%; integrated infrared reflectance, R1,, 36%; and a shading coefficient of about 0.35. The X-ray diffraction patterns of the annealed 5b757-CuS thin films indicate the formation of a ternary compound with the structure of famatinite, Cu35b54.

Effect of substrate temperature on the structural, morphological, and optical properties of Sb2S3 thin films

“…XRD investigations demonstrate that the substrate temperature plays an important role regarding the crystal quality and the preferential crystallographic orientation of the Sb 2 S 3 films. This result is in accordance with other workers [10][11][12][13][14][15]. One may also notice that Table 2 The crystallite size, D, the grain size, and roughness of Sb2S3 thin films deposited at different substrate temperatures.…”

The electronic structure of the antimony chalcogenide series: Prospects for optoelectronic applications

“…Band structure calculations for Sb 2 S 3 using PBE-DFT show that it posses an indirect fundamental band gap of 1.35 eV with the valence band maximum and conduction band minimum located at G and Y, respectively [32]. Sb 2 S 3 has a direct optical band gap with experimental studies reporting a range from 1.66-2.24 eV [14,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41], which is found to increase with the film thickness and temperature [42,43]. The nature of the band gap for Sb 2 Se 3 is also unclear but an experimental range of 1.00-1.82 eV has been reported, where the lower energy transitions are considered to be indirect [44,45,46,47].…”

Solvothermal growth of Sb2S3 microcrystallites with novel morphologies

“…The absorption edge of Sb 2 S 3 thin films lies at 2.2 eV for the amorphous form and at 1.78 eV for the crystalline state [17]. Due to its good photoconductivity, Sb 2 S 3 has received significant attention for potential applications in solar energy conversion [18].…”