Antimony-Doped Tin(II) Sulfide Thin Films

作者：Sinsermsuksakul Prasert; Chakraborty Rupak; Kim Sang Bok; Heald Steven M; Buonassisi Tonio; Gordon Roy G^*

来源：Chemistry of Materials, 2012, 24(23): 4556-4562.

DOI：10.1021/cm3024988

• thin films
• doping semiconductor
• tin sulfide
• antimony

Thin-film solar cells made from earth-abundant, inexpensive, and nontoxic materials are needed to replace the current technologies whose widespread use is limited by their use of scarce, costly, and toxic elements.(1) Tin monosulfide (SnS) is a promising candidate for making absorber layers in scalable, inexpensive, and nontoxic solar cells. SnS has always been observed to be a p-type semiconductor. Doping SnS to form an n-type semiconductor would permit the construction of solar cells with p-n homojunctions. This paper reports doping SnS films with antimony, a potential n-type dopant. Small amounts of antimony (similar to 1%) were found to greatly increase the electrical resistance of the SnS. The resulting intrinsic SnS(Sb) films could be used for the insulating layer in a p-i-n design for solar cells. Higher concentrations (similar to 5%) of antimony did not convert the SnS(Sb) to low-resistivity n-type conductivity, but instead the films retain such a high resistance that the conductivity type could not be determined. Extended X-ray absorption fine structure analysis reveals that the highly doped films contain precipitates of a secondary phase that has chemical bonds characteristic of metallic antimony, rather than the antimony-sulfur bonds found in films with lower concentrations of antimony.

• 出版日期2012-12-11