Role of metallic dopants on the properties of copper (1) iodide nanopod-like structures

Abstract

The addition of impurities as dopants to any material affects the properties of the material where the dopant modulates the optical and structural properties of the material. Copper (1) iodide films which were successfully doped with Al, Pband Zn (as metallic dopants) were synthesized by the successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) technique while the morphological, structural, optical and electrochemical properties were investigated using the scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV–Vis spectrophotometer and potentiostat respectively. The SEM image revealed a nanopod-like structure for the deposited CuI films while the XRD results confirmed the crystalline nature of the films with a face centered cubic structure. The optical results showed a progressive decrease of the absorbance values at increasing wavelengths while the optical bandgap energy of the undoped CuI film reduced from 2.47eV to 1.90eV, 1.75eV and 1.8eV for the Al-doped, Pb-doped and Zn-doped CuI films respectively. The undopedCuI film also showed a higher extinction coefficient value than the metallic-doped CuI films. The Zn-doped film had the maximum specific capacitance of 116 F g−1at 2 mV/s.