Optical Studies of Physically Deposited Nano-Ag2Te Thin Films

Abstract

Silver telluride (Ag2Te), I-VI semiconductor compound with potential applications in various advanced fields. Ag2Te nano films of thickness between 16 nm and 145 nm prepared by thermal evaporation technique at high vacuum better than 2x105 mbar. These films are found to exhibit polycrystalline nature with monoclinic structure from their XRD studies. The average particle size of these films are found to be around 24 nm using the Debye-Scherrer’s formula From AFM measurements, the average particle size is around 24 nm. The emission spectra of these films were recorded and analysed to determine its optical band gap. Optical band gap of Ag2Te varies from 1.6 eV to 1.8 eV with respect to their corresponding thicknesses of films.