Deposition of nanostructured Sn doped Co3O4 films by a facile nebulizer spray pyrolysis method and fabrication of p-Sn doped Co3O4/n-Si junction diodes for opto-nanoelectronics

Abstract

In this work, we have prepared Co3O4 thin films for different doping level including 0, 2, 4, and 6 wt% by JNSP method and analyzed their structural, morphological, optical, and electrical properties by XRD, FE-SEM, EDX, UV-Vis, and current-voltage (I-V) characteristics. The XRD profiles confirm the cubic crystal structures of Sn doped Co3O4 films. Spherical-like grains are observed from the FE-SEM images and were suppressed due to Sn doping. Also, the elements like Sn, Co, and O were confirmed by EDX analysis. The optical band gap of Co3O4 film is noticed to be increased after adding Sn ions, which has been studied through UV-Vis spectroscopy. Most importantly, we have fabricated an undoped and Sn doped p-Co3O4/n-Si junction diode for various concentrations. The determined ideality factor of the p-Sn doped Co3O4/n-Si diodes were reduced for both under dark and light conditions. In addition, the calculated responsivity, quantum efficiency, and specific detectivity of the diodes were enhanced with forwarded voltage. The p-Sn@Co3O4/n-Si diode fabricated with 2 wt% was achieved maximum responsivity and quantum efficiency of R = 247.03 mA/W, QE = 95.7%, and D* = 2.84 ×1010 at 3 V. We observed that the p-Sn doped Co3O4/n-Si diodes are highly sensitive and appropriate for photo-detection applications.