Substrate influence on the structural, surface and optical properties of CdZnS thin films

Abstract

Cadmium zinc sulfide (CdZnS) thin films have been grown on the sonicated glass, indium tin oxide (ITO) and p-Si substrates by chemical bath deposition (CBD) technique under identical chemical bath conditions through our in-house designed and developed CBD instrument. Crystallographic properties have been analyzed through X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectrometer. Particle size (D) was calculated by using Scherrer’s formula. A detailed description of the surface texture properties were investigated by atomic force microscopy (AFM) analysis. Surface texture parameters such as root mean square (RMS) surface roughness, average roughness, maximum height and average height were obtained from the AFM software. The possible unit cell type, number of elements and active layer information extracted from the AFM software were also presented. Optical transmittance spectrum of CdZnS thin film coated on glass substrate was investigated by using UV-Vis-NIR spectroscopy. Band gap was calculated by using the optical absorption edge and also the particle size (D) was theoretically estimated from the observed band gap.