Effect of heat treatment in air on physical properties of AgInS2 sprayed thin films

This work presents additional physical results about the enhancement of the heat treatment on AgInS2 sprayed thin films and the beneficial effect of the annealing in various atmospheres as reported recently by the same authors in J. Allows comp. 545 (2012) 190–199 [1]. Herewith, these ternary thin films have been subjected to an annealing process under air during 1 h for different temperature lying in 400–500 °C domains. The X-ray diffraction analysis shows indeed that AgInS2 thin film prepared crystallizes in the chalcopyrite phase with a strong (1 1 2) line with the presence of orthorhombic phase as well as the presence of undesirables binaries phases such as Ag2S and In2S3. The heat treatment in air atmosphere using 400 °C reduced the undesirable binaries phases as well as the disappearing of the orthorhombic phase. In the same line, an improvement of the cristallinity has been obtained (Crystalline size = 90 nm). Moreover, this heat treatment leads to band gap energy of the order of 1.65 eV and finally, the electrical conductivity and thermal conductivity have been achieved: 1.14 Ω−1 m−1 and 0.71 W m−1 K−1 for 400 °C as annealing temperature.