Studies on electrodeposited Cd 1− xFe xS thin films

Abstract

Thin films of Cd 1− x Fe x S have been prepared on stainless steel and fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) coated glass substrates using electrodeposition technique. Double distilled water containing precursors of Cd, Fe and S are used with ethylene diamine tetra-acetic acid (EDTA) disodium salt as a complexing agent to obtain good quality deposits by controlling the rate of reactions. The different preparative parameters like concentration of bath, deposition time, pH of the bath and Fe content in the bath have been optimized by photoelectrochemical (PEC) technique in order to get good quality thin films. Different techniques have been used to characterize electrodeposited Cd 1− x Fe x S thin films. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis reveals that the films Cd 1− x Fe x S are polycrystalline in nature with crystallite size 282 Å for the films deposited with optimized preparative parameters. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) study for the sample deposited at optimized preparative parameters reveals that all grains uniformly distributed over the surface of stainless steel substrate indicates well defined growth of polycrystalline Cd–Fe–S material. Optical absorption shows the presence of direct transition and band gap energy decreases from 2.43 to 0.81 eV with the increase of Fe content from 0 to 1. PEC study shows the films of Cd 1− x Fe x S with x = 0.2 are more photosensitive than other compositions.