Ag Films as Solar Cell Absorbers

Abstract: SnS and Ag films were deposited on glass substrates by vacuum thermal evaporation successively, then they were annealed in N2 ambience at a temperature of 300 o C for 2h. By controlling the Ag evaporation voltage to roughly alter content of Ag in SnS films, different Ag-doped SnS films were obtained. The microstructures, composition and properties of the films were characterized with X-ray diffraction ( XRD), atomic force microscopy(AFM) and some other methods. With the increase of Ag evaporation voltage (VAg), there exist new phases of Ag8SnS6 and Ag2S, whose intensity of diffraction peaks increases with the increasing Ag-dopant, and the average roughness of the films varies from 18.7nm to 23.6nm, and grain size increases from 192nm to 348nm. With the increase of VAg, the evaluated direct band gap Eg of the films decreases from 2.28eV(undoped) to 2.05eV (VAg=70V), the carrier concentration value and Hall mobility of the films diminishes from 2.048×10 14 cm-3 and 25.96 c