Structural and optical studies of CdS and CdS:Ag nano needles prepared by a SILAR method

Abstract Nano-crystalline CdS and Ag-doped CdS films are deposited on glass substrate by a SILAR technique at room temperature with cationic precursors of cadmium nitrate and silver nitrate, and anionic precursor of sodium sulfide with different S:Cd ratio in starting solutions. In order to fabricate samples, substrates were taken in the solutions with determined duration and immersion cycles. To investigate the structural and morphological characteristics of the samples XRD analysis and SEM were used. The X-ray diffraction patterns show that the CdS samples have cubic crystal structure with preferential orientation along the (111) plane and CdS:Ag samples have hexagonal crystal structure with preferential orientation along the (002) plane. Also the peak intensity of XRD patterns of CdS increases with increasing the number of immersion cycles. Optical reflection of the layers is measured with a spectrophotometer and their optical absorption coefficient and band gaps are calculated. The band gap energy of Ag-doped samples decreases respect to CdS samples. It seems that silver doping creates intermediate levels in the energy gap and this causes decreasing of energy gap. Making samples with different S:Cd ratio demonstrates that the sample with 3:1 ratio has highest peak intensity in the XRD pattern and best stoichiometry. It is also observed that with increasing S:Cd ratio, the band gap energy of the samples decreases.