Temperature -Dependent Optical and Electrical Characterization of Cu-Ga Thin Films and Their Diode Characteristics on N-Si

Abstract

In this paper, optical and electrical properties of thermally deposited Cu-Ga-S thin films were investigated using temperature-dependent optical transmission and electrical conductivity measurements. The analysis of the transmission spectra resulted in formation of three direct optical transitions due to the possible valence band splitting in the structure. The band gap values were calculated by means of absorption coefficient and incident photon energy was found in decreasing behavior as the temperature rises. The measured current-voltage values were used to extract the conductivity values which stand in the range of 1.73-2.62 (x104 O-1 cm-1) depending on the ambient temperature. These dark conductivity values were modeled by thermionic emission mechanism. The conductivity activation energies in the structures were calculated as 6.4, 14.5 and 40.7 meV according to the effects of grain boundary potentials. In addition, the films deposited on n-Si wafer showed a diode characteristic under the applied bias voltage between indium (In) front and silver (Ag) back contacts. From current-voltage measurements across the Si-based diode, about four orders of magnitude rectification was observed and the results were analyzed to determine the main diode parameters at dark and room temperature conditions.