Electrical and morphological study of thermally evaporated (Sb2S3)1-xSnx thin films

Abstract

(Sb₂S₃)_1-xSn_x thin films with different concentrations (0, 0.05 and
0.15) and thicknesses (300,500 and 700nm) have been deposited by
single source vacuum thermal evaporation onto glass substrates at
ambient temperature to study the effect of tin content, thickness and
on its structural morphology, and electrical properties. AFM study
revealed that microstructure parameters such as crystallite size, and
roughness found to depend upon deposition conditions. The DC
conductivity of the vacuum evaporated (Sb₂S₃)_1-x Sn_x thin films was
measured in the temperature range (293-473)K and was found to
increase on order of magnitude with increase of thickness, and tin
content. The plot of conductivity with reciprocal temperature
suggests, there are three activation energies Ea₁, Ea₂ and Ea₃ for
(Sb₂S₃)_1-x Sn_x for all x content values and thicknesses which
decreases with increasing tin content and thickness. Hall effect
measurement showed that low thickness (Sb₂S₃)_1-x Sn_x film exhibit
n-type conductance whereas the film exhibit p-type towards the
higher thickness. The electric carrier concentration and mobility
show opposite dependence upon tin content and thickness.