Room temperature deposition of nanostructured Bi2Se3 thin films for photoelectrochemical application: effect of chelating agents

Abstract

Nanostructured bismuth selenide (Bi2Se3) thin films have been deposited by chemical bath deposition method at room temperature using three different chelating agents, trisodium citrate, triethanolamine and ethylenedimminetetraacetic acid. The structural, morphological, optical and photoelectrochemical properties of Bi2Se3 thin films have been investigated as a function of different chelating agents. X-Ray diffraction studies revealed that the films were nanocrystalline in nature with a rhombohedral crystal structure. Trisodium citrate chelate resulted in Bi2Se3 thin films with poor crystallinity; further improvement in the crystallinity of the films was observed with triethanolamine and ethylenedimminetetraacetic acid chelates. From scanning electron microscopy, a uniform sphere-like morphology having an average sphere diameter of 90 nm was observed with trisodium citrate chelate. In the case of triethanolamine, a fibrous morphology with an average fiber thickness of 60 nm was observed, whereas for ethylenedimminetetraacetic acid chelate, a vertically arrayed petal-like morphology having petal thickness of 50–70 nm was observed. The UV-Vis absorption studies revealed that the band gap energy of the Bi2Se3 thin films with trisodium citrate, triethanolamine and ethylenedimminetetraacetic acid chelates was 1.55, 1.48 and 1.40 eV, respectively. The maximum short circuit current densities (Jsc) of 0.158, 0.214 and 0.284 mA cm−2 and the corresponding open circuit voltages (Voc) of 196, 206 and 217 mV were obtained with trisodium citrate, triethanolamine and ethylenedimminetetraacetic acid chelates, respectively. The Bi2Se3 thin films deposited using triethanolamine and ethylenedimminetetraacetic acid chelates show better photoelectrochemical performance as compared with trisodium citrate chelate.