Synthesis and characterization of zinc stannate thin films prepared by spray pyrolysis technique

• Published in: Journal of materials science. Materials in electronics Vol. 27; no. 12; pp. 12323 - 12328
• Main Authors: Patil, Mahendra A., Mujawar, Sarfraj H., Ganbavle, Vinayak V., Rajpure, Kesu Y., Deshmukh, Harish P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01-12-2016; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Annealing; Characterization and Evaluation of Materials; Chemistry and Materials Science; Electronics; Glass; Materials Science; Morphology; Optical and Electronic Materials; Spray pyrolysis; Synthesis; Thin films; Zinc stannate; Power Conversion Efficiency; Binary Oxide; Zinc Stannate; Spray Pyrolysis Technique; Photoconversion Efficiency
• ISSN: 0957-4522; 1573-482X
• DOI: 10.1007/s10854-016-4801-1

The zinc stannate thin films were synthesized by simple and inexpensive spray pyrolysis technique on the glass and fluorine doped tin oxide coated conducting glass substrates. The as deposited films were further annealed at 500 °C temperature for 12 h. The structural optical and morphological characterization of as prepared and annealed films was carried out by XRD, UV–Vis spectroscopy, SEM and AFM techniques respectively. The structural analysis shows that films are polycrystalline and crystallized in cubic inverse spinel crystal structure. SEM studies show that grain size increases after annealing and exhibits spherical morphology. AFM study shows that roughness is higher for the post annealed film. Further the samples were tested for testing their applicability for dye sensitized solar cells. The as prepared, annealed and CNT doped samples exhibits photoconversion efficiencies 2.7, 2.8 and 3.1 % respectively.