A new efficient synthesis of CuO thin films using modified SILAR method
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A new efficient synthesis of CuO thin films using modified SILAR method Othmane Daoudi1 · Aziz Elmadani1 · Mohammed Lharch1 · Mounir Fahoume1 Received: 12 May 2020 / Accepted: 30 August 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Due to its direct band gap and high absorption coefficient, Cupric Oxide (CuO) is widely used as an absorbent material for solar cells, yet most of the available deposition methods are expensive and complex. For this reason, this paper is concerned with the elaboration of CuO thin films using the simple and inexpensive modified successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction method, i.e., modified SILAR method. To that end, glass slide substrates and an aqueous solution of hydrated copper chloride (CuCl2·2H2 O) complexed with aqueous ammonia (NH3 ) (25–28%) were used, then the growth conditions were carefully evaluated to reduce the presence of the remaining phases other than CuO. The elaborated thin films are studied from four perspectives: (1) structural decomposition, (2) morphological decomposition, (3) chemical decomposition and (4) optical properties. It is found that the deposited films are polycrystalline and crystallized in a pure CuO monoclinic structure without any other secondary phase. Raman and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy confirmed the pure phase obtained and the scanning electron microscopy images showed that the resulting films were dense, smooth and homogeneous. The energy dispersive X-ray spectrum and the elemental mapping scan corroborate the uniform distribution of Cu and O elements on the film surface. Furthermore, UV–visible spectra exhibited a negative correlation between optical transmission and deposition cycles—if the deposition cycles increased, optical transmission decreased similarly the optical band gap. As well as the refractive index and Urbach energy were determined. As a result, the synthesis technique is very simple and low cost, CuO thin films could be appropriate for solar cells applications. Keywords Thin films · Copper oxide CuO · SILAR method · XRD · XPS
1 Introduction Copper oxide tenorite phase CuO was one of the most promising candidates as the absorber materials in solar cells with ideal characteristics such as the constituent elements which are inexpensive and non-toxic, cost-effectively and ease of synthesis (Bayansal et al. 2013; Sahu * Othmane Daoudi [email protected] 1
Laboratory of Physics of Condensed Matter (LPMC), Department of Physics, Faculty of Sciences, Ibn Tofail University, BP 133, Kenitra, Morocco
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et al. 2019). CuO is a p-type semiconductor due to the presence of Cu atoms vacancies, which provide an abundance of holes in the valence band (Padrón et al. 2018; Xu et al. 2018; Guillén and Herrero 2018; Chtouki et al. 2019), it is usually shown as a monoclinic crystal structure a = 4.69 Å, b = 3.42 Å, c = 5.13 Å and belongs to a crystallographic space group C2/c (Moumen et al. 2019). In addition to having a direct
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