Development of sulphurized SnS thin film solar cells

Thin films of tin sulphide (SnS) have been grown by sulphurization of sputtered tin precursor layers in a closed chamber. The effect of sulphurization temperature (Ts) that varied in the range of 150–450 °C for a fixed sulphurization time of 120 min on SnS film was studied through various characterization techniques. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis demonstrated the transformation of metallic tin layers into SnS single phase for Ts between 300 °C and 350 °C. The X-ray diffraction measurements indicated that all the grown films had the (111) crystal plane as the preferred orientation and exhibited orthorhombic crystal structure. Raman analysis showed modes at 95 cm−1, 189 cm−1 and 218 cm−1 are related to the Ag mode of SnS. AFM images revealed a granular change in the grain growth with the increase of Ts. The optical energy band gap values were estimated using the transmittance spectra and found to be varied from 1.2 eV to 1.6 eV with Ts. The Hall effect measurements showed that all the films were p-type conducting nature and the layers grown at 350 °C showed a low electrical resistivity of 64 Ω-cm, a net carrier concentration of 2 × 1016 cm−3 and mobility of 41 cm2 V−1 s−1. With the use of sprayed Zn0.76Mg0.24O as a buffer layer and the sputtered ZnO:Al as window layer, the SnS based thin film solar cell was developed that showed a conversion efficiency of 2.02%.