The search for ways of living sustainably and in a clean, green world is ongoing, and the urgency to find technologies that can keep up with adverse environmental change never cease. Novel materials and cheap industrially scalable processes are constantly being developed to accommodate these changes. Developing efficient, safe and low-cost photovoltaic (PV) devices are at the forefront of inorganic materials research. Thin film PV devices consist of multiple layers of materials which can be deposited via chemical vapour deposition (CVD). There is a need to replace the highly toxic cadmium sulfide buffer layer in copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) and copper zinc tin sulfide (CZTS) solar cells and zinc oxysulfide has garnered attention as a safe, earth-abundant alternative. Furthermore, its band gap can easily be tuned by varying the elemental oxygen to sulfur ratio. Much of the literature has employed atomic layer deposition (ALD) as the technique for film deposition, using H2S as the sulfur source. However, the CVD of zinc oxysulfide for solar cell applications has not been reported. As CVD relies on precursor solubility, there are countless non-toxic compounds which incorporate sulfur that can be used as precursors to zinc oxysulfide. There are also opportunities to design novel precursors incorporating both oxygen and sulfur so that the composition and functionality of the resultant film can be controlled at the molecular level. Presented here is the development of the synthesis of single-source precursors to zinc oxysulfide and their subsequent deposition via aerosol-assisted (AA)CVD. The characterisation of zinc oxysulfide films from dual-source one-pot mixtures is also described. It may be beneficial to explore the exact structural transformation that the varying of the O/S ratio has on this material as it may aid in further understanding of its functional properties.

Synthesis and chemical vapour deposition of precursors to zinc oxysulfide

2019 Fall National Meeting

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