Opto-Electronic Properties of Epoxy/Silicone Blend Based Thin Films

Abstract

Recently, the rise of two dimensional amorphous nanostructured thin films have ignited a big interest because of their intriguingly isotropic structural and physical properties leading to potential applications in the nano-optoelectronics. However, according to literature, most of optoelectronic properties are investigated on chalcogenides related heterostructures. This has motivated the present work aiming to provide a new platform for the fabrication, examination of the properties and the applications of 2D nanostructured thin films based on epoxy/silicone blend. Thin films of Epoxy/Silicone loaded with nitrogen doped carbon nanotubes (N-CNTs) were prepared by sol-gel method and deposited on Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) glass substrates at room temperature. Further examination of optical properties aimed the investigation of optical pseudo-gap and Urbach energy and enabled the determination of processed films thickness based on Manifacier and Swanepol method. The results indicated that the unloaded thin films have a direct optical transition with a value of 3.61 eV followed by noticeable shift towards narrowing gaps depending on the loading rate. Urbach's energy is 0.19 eV for the unloaded thin films, and varies from 0.43 to 1.33 eV for the loaded thin films with increasing the rate of N-CNTs. It is inversely variable with the optical pseudo-gap. Finally, Epoxy/Silicone loaded with N-CNTs nanocomposites films can be developed as active layers with specific optical characteristics, giving the possibility to be used in electro-optical applications.