Optical properties and surface characterization of pulsed laser-deposited Cu 2 ZnSnS 4 by spectroscopic ellipsometry

Cu2ZnSnS4 films prepared by pulsed laser deposition at different temperatures are characterized by spectroscopic ellipsometry. The focus is on confirming results from direct measurement techniques, by finding appropriate models of the surface overlayer for data fitting, and extracting the dielectric function of the films. It is found that the surface overlayer changes with film thickness and deposition temperature. Adopting different ellipsometry measurements and modeling strategies for each film, dielectric functions are extracted and compared. As the deposition temperature is increased, the dielectric functions exhibit additional critical points related to optical transitions in the material other than absorption across the fundamental band gap. In the case of a thin film <200 nm thick, surface features observed by scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy are accurately reproduced by ellipsometry data fitting. [All rights reserved Elsevier]

Pulsed laser deposition of chalcogenide sulfides from multi- and single-component targets: the non-stoichiometric material transfer

The mass transfer from target to films is incongruent for chalcogenide sulfides in contrast to the expectations of pulsed laser deposition (PLD) as a stoichiometric film growth process. Films produced from a CZTS (Cu2ZnSnS4) multi-component target have no Cu below a fluence threshold of 0.2 J/cm2, and the Cu content is also very low at low fluence from a single-component target. Above this threshold, the Cu content in the films increases almost linearly up to a value above the stoichiometric value, while the ratio of the concentration of the other metals Zn to Sn (Zn/Sn) remains constant. Films of a similar material CTS (Cu2SnS3) have been produced by PLD from a CTS target and exhibits a similar trend in the same fluence region. The results are discussed on the basis of solid-state data and the existing data from the literature