Study of Selected Morphologic, Structural and Optical Effects of Silver Coated CBD-CdS Thin Films

This work focused on comparing cadmium sulphide (CdS) thin films with and without CdS silver aggregates (CdS:Ag) deposited on the surface. We report absorption and transmission responses. Using the Tauc method, we obtained direct band gap energies with values of 2.50 (CdS) and 2.49 eV (CdS:Ag). We performed a scanning electron microscope characterization at different magnifications were cluster formations with granular shapes were observed. The highest magnification of 50,000x showed silver clusters as shiny granulates, which were confirmed by microprobe elemental mapping at a magnification of 18,000x. Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy revealed that the light composition of the silver clusters was the unique difference from the CdS thin film. X-Ray Diffraction results only detected the hexagonal CdS pattern, but not that of silver. The crystallite size was of around 13 nm. A Surface-Enhanced Ramman Scattering effect was observed upon the silver coating of the CdS thin film at 293.3 cm(-1).