Optical, structural and morphology study of Cu2O/Cu and GO/Cu2O/Cu films prepared by pulsed electrodeposition and electrophoresis

In this work, copper (I) oxide films were prepared by pulsed electrodeposition onto copper substrates. Graphene oxide was deposited on the Cu2O/Cu films by cathodic electrophoresis. The films were studied by X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, optical reflectance and atomic force microscopy. The bandgap of the Cu2O/Cu films is close to 1.8 eV due to the presence of defects and decreases to close to 1.1 eV with GO deposition due to the oxidation of Cu2O to CuO on the surface. When GO was deposited, a reduction in the mean height was observed, indicating coverage of the entire surface. A topographic transformation of the surface was also observed, consisting of an increase in grain size and homogenization of the grain shape after GO deposition, possibly due to phase transformation. This work is the first step to prepare fully wet deposited thin film ZnO/GO/Cu2O/Cu solar cells.