Effect of preparation conditions on the properties of Cu₃BiS₃thin films grown by a two – step process

A comprehensive review on synthesis and characterizations of Cu3BiS3 thin films for solar photovoltaics

“…Numerous evaporation methods such as coevaporation, fast evaporation, thermal evaporation, and electron beam (EB) [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] have been employed for the deposition of Cu 3 BiS 3 thin films. Cu 3 BiS 3 thin films were deposited using two different attitudes:…”

“…First time, in 2009 Mesa and Gordillo [21] reported preparation of Cu 3 BiS 3 thin films on a SLG substrate by co-evaporation in a two-step process. In the first step, Bi x S x layer was developed by simultaneous evaporation of Bi and S, keeping the substrate temperature at 300°C.…”

“…In 2012 Mesa et al [27] presented the results from a study held on Al/Cu 3 BiS 3 /Buffer/ZnO, using a high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) with In 2 S 3 and ZnS as a buffer layer. The Cu 3 BiS 3 was prepared by two-stage co-evaporation process with film thickness of *1 lm as reported by Mesa et al [21,22]. The ZnS buffer layer was deposited by chemical bath deposition (CBD) method using thiourea and zinc acetate as a precursor solution for S 2-and Zn 2?…”

Electronic and structural characterisation of Cu3BiS3 thin films for the absorber layer of sustainable photovoltaics

“…One of the leading among these is the natural mineral wittichenite Cu 3 BiS 3 with an orthorhombic crystal structure and direct band gap [6,7].T h i s compound also has a high absorption coefficient of~10 5 cm − 1 and can be p-type doped [8,9].…”

“…However the basic electronic properties vital for development of Cu 3 BiS 3 photovoltaic devices are almost unexplored, as reflected in the wide scatter of reported experimentally determined bandgap values from 1.14 [7] to 1.41 eV [8]. Theoretical studies of this compound suggested an indirect band gap of 1.69 eV while the smallest direct band gap was estimated to be of 1.79 eV [10].…”