Influence of potential on structural, compositional, optical and magnetic properties of electrochemically grown iron selenide thin films

Abstract

For the last few years iron chalcogenides in industries received attention due to its salient features such as structure, band gap, physical, chemical and magnetic properties. The main objective of the present investigation is to identify the modified features of iron selenide thin film growth by simple, low cost electrodeposition technique. Thin films of iron selenide are deposited on Tin Oxide coated conducting glass substrates. Structural features reported that the prepared films found to exhibit hexagonal structure with orientation along (002) plane. The parameters such as crystallite size, rms microstrain, dislocation density and stacking fault probability are determined for the deposited films. Scanning electron microscopic images showed that the deposited films have well defined morphology with nearly stoichiometry. The deposited films have band gap value around 1.21 eV. Magnetic properties are determined using Vibrating Sample Magnetometer and the parameters such as coercivity, retentivity and saturation magnetization are estimated. The experimental observations are discussed in detail.