Structural, optical and electrical properties of CuIn5S8 thin films grown by thermal evaporation method

Stoichiometric compound of copper indium sulfur (CuIn5S8) was synthesized by direct reaction of high purity elemental copper, indium and sulfur in an evacuated quartz tube. The phase structure of the synthesized material revealed the cubic spinel structure. The lattice parameter (a) of single crystals was calculated to be 10.667 Å. Thin films of CuIn5S8 were deposited onto glass substrates under the pressure of 10−6 Torr using thermal evaporation technique. CuIn5S8 thin films were then thermally annealed in air from 100 to 300 °C for 2 h. The effects of thermal annealing on their physico-chemical properties were investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), scanning electron microscope (SEM), optical transmission and hot probe method. XRD studies of CuIn5S8 thin films showed that as-deposited films were amorphous in nature and transformed into polycrystalline spinel structure with strong preferred orientation along the (3 1 1) plane after the annealing at 200 °C. The composition is greatly affected by thermal treatment. From the optical transmission and reflection, an important absorption coefficient exceeds 104 cm−1 was found. As increasing the annealing temperature, the optical energy band gap decreases from 1.83 eV for the as-deposited films to 1.43 eV for the annealed films at 300 °C. It was found that CuIn5S8 thin film is an n-type semiconductor at 300 °C.

► In this work, thin films of CuIn5S8 were successfully deposited onto glass substrates by thermal evaporation and annealed in air.
► Post-depositional annealing effects on structural, optical and electrical properties of thermal evaporated CuIn5S8 thin films were studied.
► The results reported in this work make this material attractive as an absorber material in solar cells applications.