Spray pyrolysis of silver indium sulfides.pdf

Thin Solid Films, 67 (1980) 341-345 ? Elsevier Sequoia S.A., Lausanne--Printed in the Netherlands 341 SPRAY PYROLYSIS OF SILVER INDIUM SULFIDES M. GORSKA*, R. BEAULIEU, J. J. LOFERSKI AND B. ROESSLER Division of Engineering, Brown University, Providence, R.I. (U.S.A.) (Received October 22, 1979; accepted October 22, 1979) Two silver indium sulfide compounds, AglnS 2 and AglnsSs, were prepared by spray pyrolysis. AglnS 2 always exhibited an orthorhombic structure, whereas AglnsS 8 was cubic. Electrical and optical properties of both compounds were measured. | . INTRODUCTION The spray pyrolysis method was first described by Chamberlin and Skarman 1 for preparing CdS and some other inorganic sulfide and selenide thin films. Pamplin and Feigelson 23 described the spray pyrolysis of thin films of AIBmC~ I semiconductors, where A I is copper and C vl is either sulfur or selenium, and of quaternary and quinary alloys based on these compounds. Spray pyrolysis of CulnS 2 was also described in our recent paper 4. In the present paper we report the first results of spray pyrolysis of AglnS2 and AglnsS a. 2. AglnsS 8 FILMS The first solution which we used for spray pyrolysis of silver indium sulfides was, by analogy with copper indium sulfide, an aqueous solution of AgC1, InC13 and CS(NH2) 2 with an Ag: In: S ion ratio 1:1: 2. Because of the low solubility of AgC1 in water, the molar concentration of AglnS 2 in the solution did not exceed 0.003-0.005 M. The temperature of the solution was maintained at about 100 °C during the spraying process. The solution was sprayed onto heated glass substrates in a closed chamber through which a continuous flow of nitrogen was maintained; nitrogen was also used as the carrier gas. The substrates were heated in the range of 200- 250 °C and the spraying rate was 1-3 ml min-1. A schematic diagram of the experimental set-up is shown in Fig. 1. Some films were produced from solutions in which thiourea was replaced by