STRUCTURAL, PHOTO-FUNCTIONAL AND SEMICONDUCTOR PROPERTIES OF COPPER OXIDE THIN FILMS PREPARED BY DC REACTIVE METHOD UNDER VARIOUS THICKNESSES

Abstract

Cuprous oxide (Cu2O) has been formed on glass substrates by dc reactive magnetron sputtering method, whereas pure target of the solid copper was sputtered with a mixture of plasma for argon gas and oxygen gas was used to form these films. Under vacuum chamber pressure of 1.2×10-5 Pa, thin film thickness was changed from 100 nm to 300 nm while other deposition parameters were fixed. The influence of changing the thickness of thin films on the electrical and the optical properties was investigated in this study. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray Diffractions system XRD, Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), hall effect measurement system, UV–VIS spectrophotometer were employed to determine the characteristic of the deposited thin films. Thin film of 200 nm has observed low resistivity of 60.63 Ω cm and direct band gap of 2.5eV. This study has demonstrated that the thickness has direct influence on electrical and optical properties