Structural and optical properties of thermally evaporated Ga–In–Se thin films

Abstract

In this paper, structural and optical properties of Ga – In – Se (GIS) thin films deposited by thermal evaporation technique have been investigated. The effect of annealing was also studied for samples annealed at temperatures between 300°C and 500°C. X-ray diffraction, energy dispersive X-ray analysis and scanning electron microscopy have been used for structural characterization. It was reported that increase of annealing temperature results with better crystallization and chemical composition of the films were almost same. Optical properties of the films were studied by transmission measurements in the wavelength range of 320–1100 nm. The direct bandgap transitions with energies in the range of 1.52 eV and 1.65 eV were revealed for the investigated GIS films. Photon energy dependence of absorption coefficient showed that there exist three distinct transition regions for films annealed at 400°C and 500°C. The quasicubic model was applied for these transitions to calculate crystal-field splitting and spin-orbit splitting energy values.