Structural and optical studies on PVA capped SnS films grown by chemical bath deposition for solar cell application

Abstract

Tin monosulphide (SnS) thin films capped by PVA have been successfully deposited on glass substrates for cost effective photovoltaic device applications by a simple and low-cost wet chemical process, chemical bath deposition (CBD) at different bath temperatures varying in the range, 50–80 °C. X–ray diffraction analysis showed that the deposited films were polycrystalline in nature, showing orthorhombic structure with an intense peak corresponding to (040) plane of SnS. These observations were further confirmed by Raman analysis. FTIR spectra showed the absorption bands which corresponds to PVA in addition to SnS. The scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy studies revealed that the deposited SnS films were uniform and nanostructured with an average particle size of 4.9 to 7.6 nm. The optical investigations showed that the layers were highly absorbing with the optical absorption coefficient ~105 cm–1. A decrease in optical band gap from 1.92 to 1.55 eV with an increase of bath temperature was observed. The observed band gap values were higher than the bulk value of 1.3 eV, which might be due to quantum confinement effect. The optical band gap values were also used to calculate particle size and the results are discussed.