Physical properties of cerium doped-yttrium iron garnet ultrathin films for photovoltaic application

Abstract

In this study, cerium incorporated yttrium iron garnet ultrathin films (CexY3-xFe5O12) (where x = 0, 0.1, 0.3, and 0.5) were prepared by the sol-gel method, spin coating technique, and heat treatment on quartz substrates. The effect of Ce on structural properties, morphology of thin films surface, and optical properties was explored by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission microscopy (FESEM), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). According to the XRD results, the films were crystalline with the cubic phase, while the FESEM indicated the YIG nanoparticles with approximately spherical shapes. The growth process of crystallite in YIG nanoparticles was investigated by X-ray peak broadening. The Williamson-Hall (W–H) analysis was utilized to maintain the contributions of crystallite size on the peak broadening of Ce:YIG nanoparticles. The structural features of thin films such as strain and stress for all of the peaks of XRD were accurately determined from the uniform deformation model (UDM) according to the YIG cubic phase. According to the AFM pictures, it seemed that thin films had a continuous and smooth surface. The absorption and transmission were measured in the visible and infrared region from 400 to 1200 nm.