Structural and temperature-dependent optical properties of thermally evaporated CdS thin films

In this work, structural and temperature dependent optical properties of thermally evaporated CdS thin films were investigated. X-ray diffraction, energy dispersive spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy experiments were carried out to characterize the thin films and obtain information about the crystal structure, atomic composition, surface morphology and vibrational modes. Temperature-dependent transmission measurements were performed in between 10 and 300 K and in the spectral range of 400-1050 nm. The analyses of transmittance spectra were accomplished by two different methods called as the absorption coefficient and the derivative spectrophotometry analyses. All evaluated band gap energy values at each studied temperature were in good agreement with each other depending on the applied analyses techniques. Room temperature gap energy values were found around 2.39 eV and 2.40 eV from absorption coefficient and derivative spectrophotometry analyses, respectively. Band gap energy depending on the sample temperature was studied under the light of two different models to investigate average phonon energy, electron phonon coupling parameter and the rate of change of band gap energy with temperature.