Molecular Crystals and Liquid Crystals, Vol.532, 455-463, 2010
A Study on Copper Selenide Thin Films for Photovoltaics by a Continuous Flow Microreactor
Highly uniform polycrystalline copper selenide (CuSe) thin films were deposited onto glass substrates using a solution-based continuous flow microreactor (CFM) method at low processing temperature conditions. The as-deposited CuSe thin films were annealed at 400 degrees C for 1 hour under a nitrogen atmosphere. SEM, AFM, XRD, TEM, XPS, and UV-visible spectrophotometry were employed to study the properties of the CuSe thin films. The average grain size of the CuSe thin film was around 30 nm and the surface roughness was 5 nm. The estimated optical band gap was approximately 1.5 eV for the CuSe thin film after annealing at 400 degrees C. Based on the X-ray Diffraction (XRD) and Selected Area Electron Diffraction (SAED) analyses, the CuSe thin films that were annealed at 400 degrees C had a hexagonal structure. The chemical binding information of the CuSe thin film was studied using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).