Thermoluminescence characterization of (Ga2Se3)0.25 – (Ga2S3)0.75 single crystal compounds

Abstract

Ga2Se3 and Ga2S3 compounds take attention due to their potential applications in photovoltaics. Defects and impurities may affect the quality of optoelectronic devices. Therefore, it is worthwhile to determine the parameters (activation energy, order of kinetics, frequency factor) of traps associated with the defects and/or impurities. The aim of the present paper is to investigate the trapping parameters of (Ga2Se3)0.25 – (Ga2S3)0.75 single crystal which is one of the member of (Ga2Se3)x – (Ga2S3)1-x mixed crystals. For this purpose, thermoluminescence (TL) experiments were performed on (Ga2Se3)0.25 – (Ga2S3)0.75 single crystals in the 10–300 K region. TL spectra were also recorded using various heating rates in between 0.2 and 1.0 K/s and stopping temperatures from 30 to 60 K to get the detailed information about the characteristics of the trapping parameters. TL glow curves exhibited the overlapped peaks. The stopping temperature experimental data indicated that traps present quasi-continuous distribution within the band gap. Initial rise method analyses were applied to get the activation energies of quasi-continuously distributed revealed traps. Thermal activation energies of distributed traps were found as increasing from 108 to 246 meV as stopping temperature was increased from 30 to 60 K. The structural characteristics (lattice constants and atomic compositions of constituent elements) of used compound were also reported in the present study.