Antimony sulphide, an absorber layer for solar cell application

Abstract

Replacement of the toxic, expensive and scarce materials with nontoxic, cheap and earth-abundant one, in solar cell absorber layer, is immensely needed to realize the vision of green and sustainable energy. Two-micrometre-thin antimony sulphide film is considered to be adequate as an absorbing layer in solar cell applications. In this paper, we synthesize antimony sulphide thin films on glass substrate by physical vapour deposition technique, and the obtained films were then annealed at different temperatures (150–250 °C). The as-deposited and annealed samples were investigated for structural and optoelectronic properties using different characterization techniques. The X-ray diffraction analysis showed that the annealed samples were polycrystalline with Sb2S3 phase, while the as-deposited sample was amorphous in nature. The optical properties are measured via optical ellipsometric techniques. The measured absorbance of the film is adequately high, and every photon is found to be absorbed in visible and NIR range. The conductivity type of the films measured by hot-point probe technique is determined to be p-type. The optical band gap of the resulted samples was in the range (2.4–1.3 eV) for the as-deposited and annealed films.