Highly crystalline p-PbS thin films with tunable optical and hole transport parameters by chemical bath deposition

Abstract Lead sulfide (PbS) thin films, consisting of well faceted (up to 400 nm) cubic-nanocrystals and possessing significantly improved opto-electronic parameters essential for photovoltaic applications, are grown by utilizing chemical bath deposition (CBD) technique with bath concentrations of 10–200 mM. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman studies confirm the highly crystalline and pure phase of PbS. FESEM and HRTEM studies show that all the films possess uniform and compact (111) oriented nanocubic morphology. Bath concentration change provides tunability of nanocube size from 100 to 400 nm and the direct optical band gap from 1.50 to 0.94 eV. The PbS films exhibit p-type semiconducting behavior with hitherto unreported concurrent highest mobility of 29.3 cm2V−1s−1 and high carrier concentration of ∼1018 cm−3 with the lowest room temperature resistivity of 0.26 Ω–cm. The 25 mM and 10 mM films show significant surface plasmon absorption in 1200–2400 nm range making them suitable as efficient infrared absorbers in excitonic and multi-junction solar cells.