Synthesis and characterization of CuO thin films grown by chemical spray pyrolysis

Abstract

In this study, nanostructured cupric oxide (CuO) thin films were deposited using simple spray pyrolysis technique on glass substrates with a fixed temperature at 375 $$^{\circ }$$ C. The films were deposited at different precursor molarities 0.035, 0.05 and 0.1 M using (CuCl $$_{2}\cdot 2$$ H $$_{2}$$ O) as precursor. The characterizations used such as X-ray diffraction (XRD) shows the formation of pure polycrystalline CuO with tenorite phase which belongs to a monoclinic structure. Raman spectroscopy confirms what we obtained in XRD. The films deposited with 0.1 M show high absorbance. The gap energy decreased from 1.58 to 1.53 eV with increasing precursor concentration from 0.035 to 0.1 M. Other optical parameters such as refractive index, extinction coefficient and dielectric constants were calculated through absorbance/transmittance data extracted from spectrophotometry.