Stoichiometry control of SnSe thin films prepared by thermal coevaporation for photovoltaic and thermoelectric application

Abstract

Metal Chalcogenides has been arisen for novel material as a photovoltaic absorber layer and thermoelectric device. SnSe, one of the chalcogenide compound, is consisted with earth abundant materials and has suitable electrical and optical properties for photovoltaic application. Despite those advantages, researches about SnSe has not been studied widely due to the difficulty of preparation single-phase SnSe thin films. In this thesis, we prepared the single-phase SnSe thin films via thermal co-evaporation method, including analysis about optical and electrical properties while stoichiometry of SnSe changed. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray diffraction technique (XRD), I-V and External quantum efficiency measurement (EQE) and Thermoelectric measurement were used for characterization. Finally, based on those analysis, applications for photovoltaic device absorber layer and thermoelectric device were also studied.