Effect of substrate temperature on structural and thermoelectric properties of RF magnetron sputtered SnSe thin film

SnSe is a potential thermoelectric material, but there are few reports about the thermoelectric properties of the film. In this work, SnSe thin films were deposited on glass substrates by RF magnetron sputtering from SnSe alloy target. The effect of substrate temperature on the structural and thermoelectric properties was investigated. It was found that the columnar grains and the surface roughness of the films increase with increasing the substrate temperature. The film deposited at 558 K exhibited a high crystalline quality and stoichiometric composition, which has a maximum power factor of 1.4[Formula: see text]uWcm[Formula: see text]K[Formula: see text] at 575[Formula: see text]K. The results of this work demonstrate the importance of high substrate temperature to obtain high thermoelectric performance SnSe films.