On the electrochemical synthesis and characterization of p-Cu2O/n-ZnO heterojunction

The interface quality of ZnO-Cu2O heterojunction play a crucial role in determining the performance of photovoltaic devices. Thus, the amelioration of ZnO and Cu2O properties is required to improve these devices efficiency. In this work, we fabricated p-Cu2O/n-ZnO heterojunction on fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) substrates using highly transparent n-type ZnO (T∼90%) and well crystalline Cu2O nano-cubes with high acceptor concentration, deposited at optimal conditions by simple electrodeposition in aqueous solution. The morphological, structural, optical, and electrical characteristics of p-Cu2O/n-ZnO heterojunction were investigated by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-Vis and photoluminescence (PL) analysis. The resulting Au/p-Cu2O/n-ZnO/FTO diode showed well-defined rectifying behavior with turn on voltage of 0.5 V, and high crystallinity of (111)-oriented p-Cu2O well-defined cubic grains on (101)-oriented n-ZnO flat layer. Therefore, this study provides an approach to form high quality ZnO and Cu2O layers, by electrodeposition, to improve the p-Cu2O/n-ZnO heterojunction quality. Which will help in development of low cost and environment friendly solar cells.66