Influence of Sputtering Conditions on Properties of Copper Oxide Thin Films

The fossil fuel power consumption generates $CO_2$, which causes the problems such as global warming. Also, the increase in energy consumption has accelerated the depletion of the fossil fuels, and renewable energy is attracting attention. Among the renewable energies, the solar energy gets a lot of attention as the infinite clean energy source. But, the supply level of solar cell is insignificant due to high cost of generation of electric power in comparison with fossil fuels. Thus several researchers are recently doing the research on ultra-low-cost solar cells. Also, $Cu_2O$ is one of the applied materials as an absorption layer in ultra-low-cost solar cells. Cuprous oxide ($Cu_2O$) is highly desirable semiconductor oxide for use in solar energy conversion due to its direct band gap ($E_g={\sim}2.1eV$) and a high absorption coefficient that absorbs visible light of wavelengths up to 650 nm. In addition, $Cu_2O$ has several advantages such as non-toxicity, low cost and can be prepared with simple and cheap methods on large scale. In this work, we fabricated the $Cu_2O$ thin films by reactive sputtering method. The films were deposited with a Cu target with variable parameters such as substrate temperature, rf-power, and annealing condition. Finally, we confirmed the structural properties of thin films by XRD and SEM.

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