Physical characterization of Cu2ZnGeSe4 thin films from annealing of Cu-Zn-Ge precursor layers

Cu2ZnGeSe4 (CZGeSe) can be considered as a potential alternative for wide band gap thin film devices. In this work, CZGeSe thin films were deposited on Mo-coated soda lime glass substrates by sequential deposition of sputtered Cu, Zn and e-beam evaporated Ge layers from elemental targets followed by annealing at high temperature using H2Se gas. We report on the effect of the precursor stack order and composition and the impact of the annealing temperature on the physical properties of CZGeSe thin films. The optimal layer morphology was obtained when using a Mo/Cu/Zn/Ge precursor stack annealed at 460 °C. We have observed that the formation of secondary phases such as ZnSe can be prevented by tuning the initial composition of the stack, the stack order and the annealing conditions. This synthesis process allows synthesizing CZGeSe absorber with an optical band gap of 1.5 eV.