Studies on nanocrystalline cadmium sulphide (CdS) thin films deposited by spray pyrolysis

Abstract

Cadmium chalcogenides with appropriate band gap energy have been attracting a great deal of attention because of their potential applications in optoelectronic devices. CdS in the form of thin film is prepared at different substrate temperatures by a simple and inexpensive chemical spray pyrolysis technique. The as-deposited thin films have been characterized by XRD, SEM, EDAX and electrical resistivity measurement techniques. The XRD patterns show that the films are polycrystalline with hexagonal crystal structure irrespective of substrate temperature. SEM studies reveal that the grains are uniform with uneven spherically shaped, distributed over the entire surface of the substrates. Compositional analysis reveals that the material formed is stoichiometric at the optimized substrate temperature. The optical band gap energy is found to be 2.44 eV with direct allowed band-to-band transition for film deposited at 300°C. The electrical resistivity measurement shows that the films are semiconducting with a minimum resistivity for film deposited at 300°C. The thermoelectric power measurement shows that films exhibit n-type of conductivity.