In situ gas-solid reaction for fabrication of copper antimony sulfide thin film as photovoltaic absorber

In this report, a facile, low-cost, in situ gas-solid reaction method has been successfully employed for the deposition of copper antimony sulfide (CuSbS2) semiconductor film, where copper and antimony metal precursor is first spin-coated on the TiO2 substrate, followed by reaction with H2S gas and further thermal annealing. The CuSbS2 film shows broad absorption ranged from 400 nm to 830 nm with a band gap of 1.57 eV. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis confirms valence states of the synthetic samples for Cu+, Sb3+ and S2−, verifying phase-pure CuSbS2. Besides, the CuSbS2 films made by one-step method show good photoelectric property with a high potential as photovoltaic absorber.