Annealing treatment-induced structural, optical and electrical behaviour of thermally evaporated CuSe films for solar cells

• Published in: Journal of materials science. Materials in electronics 2023-06, Vol.34 (16), p.1266, Article 1266
• Main Authors: Arora, S., Chuhadiya, S., Suthar, D., Himanshu, Dhaka, M. S., Sharma, G.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Ambience; Annealing; Characterization and Evaluation of Materials; Chemistry and Materials Science; Computer architecture; Copper selenides; Glass substrates; Grain size; Materials Science; Optical and Electronic Materials; Photovoltaic cells; Preferred orientation; Solar cells; Thickness; Thin films
• ISSN: 0957-4522; 1573-482X
• DOI: 10.1007/s10854-023-10672-8

With considering the technological importance of CuSe material for solar cell applications, the present work elaborates the annealing-induced structural, optical, and electrical behavior of Copper selenide (CuSe) thin films. The CuSe layers with thickness of 150 nm have been deposited onto cleaned glass and ITO substrates using resistive heating thermal evaporation technique which is physical process and recognised for high reproducibility and stability of grown layers. The as grown films were subjected to annealing at temperature 50 °C, 100 °C, and 150 °C in air ambience. The CuSe films are found to be polycrystalline in nature with (220) preferred orientation of cubic system where the grain size is obtained in range 34–44 nm. The absorbance of all the films is decreased with increasing wavelength and fluctuated with annealing temperature. The linear behaviour of current–voltage (I–V) measurements proved the Ohmic character of the thin films. The obtained findings demonstrated that annealing treatment imparts a huge impact on the properties of CuSe films and the processed films could be employed as constituent layers in photovoltaic devices in accordance with the desired device architecture.