Effects of Ge substrate on the structural and optical conductivity parameters of Bi₂O₃ thin films

Abstract

In this article the structural, optical and dielectric properties of a 200 nm thick Bi2O3 thin films which are deposited onto amorphous germanium substrate are reported. Both of the Ge and Bi2O3 thin films are prepared by the thermal evaporation technique under vacuum pressure of 10 s mbar. Bi2O3 thin films are found to prefer the monoclinic nature of structure with larger values of microstrain, dislocation density, stacking faults and smaller grain sizes upon replacement of the glass substrate by germanium. Optically, significant redshift in the energy band gap is observed when the films are grown onto Ge. The Ge/Bi2O3 heterojunctions exhibit a conduction and valence band offsets of value of 0.81 and 1.38 eV, respectively. In addition to the enhancement in the dielectric constant near the IR region, the Drude-Lorentz modeling of the Ge/Bi2O3 heterojunctions has shown remarkable effect of the Ge substrate on the optical conductivity parameters of Bi2O3. Particularly, the drift mobility increased by about one order of magnitude, the free hole density decreased by (similar to)24 times and the plasmon frequency ranges extended from 5.21 to 11.0 GHz to 2.59-12.80 GHz when germanium substrate is used. The optical features of the heterojunction nominate it for visible light communication technology.