Crystallization of antimony sulfide films on stainless steel substrates obtained by sequential chemical bath deposition

Antimony sulfide (Sb 2 S 3 ) films have been typically deposited on glass substrates, however, there are a few reports about its deposition on stainless steel substrates. In this work, Sb 2 S 3 was successfully deposited on stainless steel substrates for the first time using sequential chemical bath deposition (CBD) at 2 °C and thermally treated at 300 °C by 5 min in air. XRD and Raman spectroscopy analysis revealed that the as deposited Sb 2 S 3 films exhibits an amorphous phase while the thermally treated has a polycrystalline nature with an orthorhombic structure. An increase in (002) crystalline plane was favored with the increases in deposition layers and was not observed an increase in the oxide phases. The optical band gap was calculated directly on stainless steel substrates by diffuse reflectance and Kubelka-Munk function, and was found a band gap of 2.36, 1.78, 1.71 and 1.75 eV for amorphous, 1 layer, 2 layers, and 3 layers, respectively. The SEM analysis revealed that the sequential deposition improves the surfaces of the Sb 2 S 3 films on stainless steel substrates, and the atomic ratio measured by EDS is near to 1, however the properties of Sb 2 S 3 films were not strongly affected. Our results suggest that the properties of Sb 2 S 3 films on stainless steel substrates can be used for the development of flexible solar cells.