Investigation Of CZTS Material Prepared By Non-vacuum Synthesis And RF Magnetron Sputtering Deposition

The economy has been rapidly developing in the past decades, but the environment has been getting worse. The environmental crisis such as green house effect and haze has seriously affected people’s life and work, thus, it becomes more and more important to use clean energy to replace traditional sources. As we all know, solar energy is one of renewable and clean energies, which can be converted into electrical energy by solar cells. Copper zinc tin sulfur(Cu2Zn Sn S4, CZTS) or Copper zinc tin sulfur selenium(Cu2Zn Sn(S,Se)4, CZTSSe) with adjustable optical bandgap(1.0-1.5e V) and high absorption coefficient(104 cm-1) have emerged as one of the most promising candidates for high-efficiency and low-cost thin films solar cells.In this work, CZTS materials(Nanoparticles and thin films) were fabricated by non-vacuum preparation technologies i.e. ink-based synthesis and hot-injection synthesis and by vacuum magnetron sputtering deposition. XRD, Raman, FTIR, SEM, EDS and XRF were employed to investigate the material characteristics of the prepared CZTS Material.The synthesized CZTS nanoparticles are Kesterite phase. However, the crystalline sizes of CZTS nanoparticles synthesized by ink-based synthesis and hot-injection show particles are too large to form the film by spin coating due to the agglomeration of particles.Organic solvent was used as chelating agent to control the crystalline size. Furthermore, the CZTS nanoparticles were further synthesized by employing organic compounds(DDTC-X) as metal sources. By this way, the synthesized CZTS particles show good dispersity and uniformity.In addition, the CZTS thin films were deposited by RF-magnetron sputtering from a single-phase quaternary CZTS target, which was manufactured using Cu S, Zn S and Sn S powders(Cu S+Zn S+Sn S→CZTS). It is found that the as-sputtered and post-sulfured thin films show copper-poor and zinc-rich element ratios, which may due to the different sputtering yield of copper and zinc. More works should be carried out to further optimize the stoichiometric of targets as well as stoichiometry and other properties of prepared thin films for application in CZTS thin film solar cells in the future.