Segregation of chlorine in n-type tin monosulfide ceramics: Actual chlorine concentration for carrier-type conversion

Tin monosulfide (SnS) is an attractive material for photovoltaic cells because of its suitable band-gap energy, high absorption coefficient, and non-toxic and abundant constituent elements. The primary drawback of this material is the lack of n-type SnS. We recently demonstrated n-type SnS by doping...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied physics letters 2018-05, Vol.112 (20)
Main Authors: Iguchi, Yuki, Sugiyama, Taiki, Inoue, Kazutoshi, Yanagi, Hiroshi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Absorptivity
Applied physics
Carrier density
Ceramics
Chlorine
Conversion
Doping
Electron probe microanalysis
Electron probes
Energy gap
Hall effect
Photovoltaic cells
Tin
Titanium nitride
X-ray fluorescence
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Summary:Tin monosulfide (SnS) is an attractive material for photovoltaic cells because of its suitable band-gap energy, high absorption coefficient, and non-toxic and abundant constituent elements. The primary drawback of this material is the lack of n-type SnS. We recently demonstrated n-type SnS by doping with Cl. However, the Cl-doped n-type SnS bulk ceramics exhibited an odd behavior in which carrier-type conversion but not electron carrier concentration depended on the Cl concentration. In this study, the electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) elemental mapping of Cl-doped SnS revealed continuous homogeneous regions with a relatively low Cl concentration along with the islands of high Cl concentration in which Sn/S is far from unity. The difference between the Cl concentration in the homogeneous region (determined by EPMA) and the bulk Cl concentration (determined by wavelength-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy) increased with the increasing Cl doping amount. The carrier concentration and the Hall coefficient clearly depended on the Cl concentration in the homogeneous region. Carrier-type conversion was observed at the Cl concentration of 0.26 at. % (in the homogeneous region).
ISSN:0003-6951
1077-3118
DOI:10.1063/1.5027679