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ARTICLE

Effect of porosity of mesoporous silicon substrates on CdS thin films deposited by chemical bath deposition

F. Saker^a,*, L. Remache^a, D. Belfennache^b, K. R. Chebouki^a, R. Yekhlef^b

a Laboratory of Materials and System Structure and their Reliability, Oum El Bouaghi University, Oum El Bouaghi,04000, Algeria
b Research Center in Industrial Technologies CRTI, P.O. Box 64, Cheraga, 16014 Algiers, Algeria

* Corresponding Author:

Chalcogenide Letters 2025, 22(2), 151-166. https://doi.org/10.15251/CL.2025.222.151

Received 11 November 2024; Accepted 10 February 2025;

Abstract

In this work the chemical bath deposition (CBD) method was used to synthesize Cadmium sulphide (CdS) thin films on glass, silicon (Si), and porous silicon (PSi) substrates. The PSi substrates were prepared by an electrochemical etching method using different current densities at constant etching time of 5 minutes. The CdS thin films were characterized using the X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), optical transmittance spectroscopy in the Uv visible range, and electrical characterization (I–V characteristics). The obtained results demonstrated that the morphology of the deposited materials was influenced by the porosity of the PSi substrates. The average crystallite dimensions for CdS/glass and CdS/Si were determined to be 46.12 nm and 23.08 nm, respectively. In CdS/PSi structures, the average value of the grain size decreases with increasing porosity. The smallest one is obtained for the CdS/PSi structure with 70% porosity, amounting to 11.55 nm and the smallest value is also for the mean the RMS (Root-Mean-Square) value 18.83 nm. The measured current-voltage characteristics in coplanar structure on the CdS/PSi/Si sample showed that the photocurrent of the CdS/Si structure is of 3.17 µA and increases up to 600 µA for the CdS/PSi/60% structure.

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Keywords

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