An extensive comparative study for microstructural properties and crystal imperfections of Novel sprayed Cu3SbSe3 Nanoparticle-thin films of different thicknesses

Abstract

This research work is allocated to preparing and studying microstructural parameters and crystal imperfections of the polycrystalline Cu3SbSe3 nanoparticle-thin films of various thicknesses. Several preparatory conditions are controlled for obtaining high-quality thin films using the spray pyrolysis process. The crystal structure of films is examined via X-ray diffraction, XRD, which depicted that all thin films have the orthorhombic polycrystalline structure of the space group Pnma (62). XRD-patterns are also utilized to study and investigate the microstructural parameters and the crystal defects of the films. There is good consistency between theoretical and experimental percentages of elements of the composition of the Cu3SbSe3 films as detected by energy-dispersive spectroscopy analysis. The field-emission-scanning-electron microscope has employed to check the surface nature of thin films. An extensive investigation is performed to study microstructural properties and defects of films depending on the comparison between several applied microstructural methods. The broadening of XRD lines has been estimated using the line profile analysis via the full width at half the maximum and integrated breadth methods, which are treated by many distribution functions. Scherrer formula, Williamson-Hall equation, uniform deformation model, uniform stress deformation model, and the size-strain plot method, in addition to a novel route, have been employed to evaluate the crystallite size, microstrain, and some crystal defects. The stresses, residual micro-strains, lattice micro-stains (in the three dimensions) were estimated and discussed. The study demonstrates that the crystallization process of films is improved, and the crystal imperfections are reduced when the thickness of films increased, significantly.