The band alignment of Cu2O/ZnO and Cu2O/GaN heterostructures

Abstract

Using photoelectron spectroscopy, we investigate the band alignments of the Cu2O/ZnO heterointerface and compare the findings with the corresponding values for Cu2O/GaN. While for Cu2O/ZnO, we find a valence band offset (VBO) of 2.17 eV and a conduction band offset (CBO) of 0.97 eV, both values are considerably reduced for Cu2O/GaN where the numbers are 1.47 eV (VBO) and 0.24 eV (CBO), respectively. The large CBO between ZnO and Cu2O will very likely result in low photovoltaic power conversion efficiencies as is the current status of Cu2O/ZnO solar cells.