Experimental and theoretical investigation of pure and (Co,Sr) co-doped CdS system for optoelectronics applications: A quantitative comparison

This work reports an experimental and theoretical investigation of pure, Sr, and (Sr,Co) co-doped CdS systems. Pure and co-doped CdS nanostructure thin films were grown with varying Co doping concentrations by sol-gel spin coating method. X-ray diffractograms of the films reveal that the films grow along (002) plane and the crystallites sizes were about ∼3–6 nm. The band gaps of the films were obtained in order of 2.30–2.48 eV and a blue shift in the band gap with co-doping was observed in comparison with Sr:CdS system. In addition, pure and co-doped CdS system were also investigated via density functional theory. Initially, pure and co-doped CdS systems were optimized using WIEN2k software based on density functional theory. The calculated optical properties and band gap reveal a close agreement with the experimental results. The (Sr,Co) co-doped CdS shows the spin polarization effect on the valence band which makes this materials suitable for optoelectronics and spintronics applications.