Optical and electrical properties of Sn-Sb-Se chalcogenide thin films

The optical and electrical properties of the as-prepared and annealed SnxSb20Se$_{80-x}$ (where x = 8, 10, 12, 13.5, 15, 16.5 and 18 at.%) thin films were studied. X-ray diffraction showed that all the as-prepared Sn-Sb-Se films were amorphous. Annealing the films at 473 K or above crystallized the films and the degree of crystallinity depended on the Sn content. The optical transmittance and reflectance were measured in the wavelength rang 200–2500 nm. The estimated optical band gap was found to decrease with increasing Sn content. A great difference in the optical constants values due to transformation from amorphous to crystalline phase structure of the films were found after annealing. This is advantageous for optical disk data storage applications. It was found that the resistivity decreases with increasing temperature for all the compositions indicating that these films have a semiconducting behavior with thermally activated conduction. The conduction in these films was suggested to be thermally assisted charge carrier movement in the extended states. Annealing the films caused a reduction in the room temperature resistivity by six order of magnitude. This was ascribed to the amorphous-crystalline transformation.