Fabrication and characterization of Sr-doped PbS thin films grown by CBD

In this work, undoped and Strontium-doped lead sulfide (PbS) thin films were deposited on glass substrates by chemical bath deposition (CBD) technique. The effect of Sr doping concentration on the structural, morphological and optical properties of the PbS thin films was studied. Changing in crystallite size, microstrain, dislocation density and band gap energy values of the PbS thin films as a function of Sr concentration were investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-Ray diffraction (XRD) and UV-visible spectroscopy measurements. Energy dispersive X-Ray analysis (EDS) results indicated that nanostructured PbS films is doped with Sr without causing much lattice strain. According to XRD experiments crystallite size of the films is decreasing from 17.90 to 9.14 nm with increasing Sr-doping. UV-visible analysis showed that the band gap value of PbS thin films increased from 1.73 ev to 2.19 eV by changing Sr doping concentration from 0% to 5%.