Influence of temperature and pressure on CdTe:Ag thin film

ABSTRACTIn this work, cadmium telluride (CdTe) nanoparticles-doped Ag was deposited on Ag wafer at 150°C and of 2 × 10−5 mbar. The thickness of thin films is 80 nm. The results of the XRD analysis show the formation of CdTe cubic phase and CdTe:Ag with a strong preferential orientation (220) at 150°C. The particle size in this orientation obtained about 13.00 nm. CdTe films were annealed at temperatures of 300 and 500°C and were placed under pressures of 1 × 10−4 and 6.5 × 10−4 mbar to investigate the effect of annealing and vacuum pressure changes on particle size, respectively. UV–vis measurements indicate the optical band gap for CdTe:Ag thin films is 1.75 eV and decreases with increasing the annealing temperature and pressure. Finally, to study the morphology of CdTe:Ag thin films, SEM analysis was done. The results revealed that variations of annealing temperature are more effective to increase the particle size than variations of pressure.