Impact of growth-synthesis conditions on Cu2Zn1−xCdxSnS4 monograin material properties

This paper presents the impact of growth conditions on the properties of copper zinc cadmium tin sulfide (Cu2Zn1−xCdxSnS4) monograin powder synthesized in molten CdI2. We studied the effects of synthesis time and flux amount on the properties of the monograin powder. Our results showed that we could control the phase composition, grain size and the morphology of the as grown Cu2Zn1−xCdxSnS4 powder by changing the synthesis conditions. We found that in comparison with other used fluxes (KI, NaI), monograin powders synthesized in molten CdI2 were less faceted and more round shaped. The average grain size increased as the flux amount decreased. The optimum synthesis time to obtain usable grain size with 50-100μ was found to be 160 h with CdI2 flux amount, providing the ratio of the volumes of CdI2/CZTS is 0.5.