Effect of selenisation on the properties of antimony selenide thin films

Abstract Antimony Selenide (Sb 2 Se 3 ) is an important photoconductive semiconductor and it has a band gap of 1.3 eV. It finds applications in solar selective and decorative coating, optical devices and thermoelectric cooling devices. In the present work, Sb 2 Se 3 thin film is prepared by Chemical Bath Deposition (CBD) technique. This method is most suitable for large area samples and it is very simple. Antimony chloride and sodium selenosulfate are used as precursors for the preparation of antimony selenide thin films. It was observed from XPS analysis that antimony oxide was also present as an impurity phase along with antimony selenide. In this work, selenisation is carried out in order to increase the selenium content in the pristine antimony selenide thin films. Selenisation was also done by the method of CBD. These samples were annealed at various temperatures and characterized structurally, morphologically and optically. It was observed that the inclusion of Se has lead to exclusion of oxygen from the surface layers of Antimony Selenide films. Se inclusion has also changed the morphology of Antimony selenide films drastically.