Electrodeposition of Cu2O thin Film Onto Copper Substrate by Linear Sweep Voltammetry at Low Duration: Effect of Bath pH

Abstract

Copper (II) oxide (Cu2O) has attracted much interest as a semiconductor material for solar cell applications. Here we report the synthesis of Cu2O, thin films through an economical and simple electrodeposition method at low duration (10 min) by linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) method at 50 °C bath temperature, with the use of citric acid as a complexing agent. The influence of pH value (pH = 9.5, 10.5, 11.5, and 12.5) on structural, morphological, and optical properties of the synthesized Cu2O thin films onto copper substrate was investigated. The synthesized Cu2O thin films have been characterized using various techniques like X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM-EDX), UV-vis spectrophotometry. The X-ray diffraction showed that the deposited thin films at pH= 9.5, 10.5, 11.5 matched well with the cubic (Pn-3m) structure and showed an improvement of the crystallinity near the value pH=10.5. Raman spectroscopy confirms the cubic structure of the synthesized thin film. Thin films show a high absorption coefficient in the visible spectra, and the calculated band gap energy value is near 1.8 eV.