Post annealing effects on structural, optical and electrical properties of CuSbS2 thin films fabricated by combinatorial thermal evaporation technique

Abstract

Copper antimony sulfide (CuSbS2) thin films were fabricated by combinatorial thermal evaporation technique on well cleaned glass substrates. The deposited thin films were annealed in argon gas atmosphere for 1 h at temperature range of 150–350 °C. The effect of annealing temperature on structural, morphological, optical and electrical properties was studied using the different characterization techniques. The XRD analysis confirmed the crystallinity of the obtained samples with CuSbS2 phase in chalcostibite structure. Optical properties of the deposited samples showed good response in the visible and NIR region, envisaging the potential of CuSbS2 as an efficient solar cell material. The optical band gap of CuSbS2 thin films was measured to be 1.5 eV. A decrease (12.5–1.43 KΩ-cm) was observed for the resistivity of samples with the increase in annealing temperature. The plot of sheet resistance with annealing temperature confirmed the uniformity of samples. These thin films were found as a sustainable substitute material for the absorber layer in conventional thin film solar cell system, because of the abundance and low cost of its constituent elements. This study opens new avenue of research for scalable synthesis of CuSbS2 thin films for solar cell and photovoltaic applications.