RSC Advances
Paper
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gap solar cell of Eg ¼ 1.3–1.4 eV in a simulated solar spectrum
(AMG 1.5, i.e. xed incident light) is around 30%. Hence, the
optical properties that we measure for these materials suggest
that they may well be useful for applications in the absorber
layers in solar cells. We therefore studied the electronic prop-
erties of these materials as thin lms deposited using spin
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whilst the carrier mobility ranged between 58–60 cm2 Vꢀ1 sꢀ1
The estimated carrier densities in these lms are of the order of
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.
11 F.-J. Fan, L. Wu and S.-H. Yu, Energy Environ. Sci., 2014, 7,
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ESI.†
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Conclusions
Copper, iron and tin O-ethylxanthate complexes have been
successfully synthesized. The complexes were found to
decompose in the temperature range of 150–450 C to give the
ꢁ
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metal sulphide as the nal product in conformity with the mass
loss data and were used for the synthesis of CFTS powders. The
CFTS powder (1) and (2) have been successfully synthesised
from both Sn(II) and Sn(IV) precursors respectively using pyrol-
ysis in the temperature range of 250 to 450 ꢁC. The stannite
phase is obtained for both CFTS powders, which was ascer-
tained from a tetragonal distortion parameter c/2a of less than 1
in all cases. Absorption measurements conrm that Cu2FeSnS4
powder (1) and (2) are direct band gap semiconductors having
bandgap energies of 1.32 eV and 1.39 eV, respectively and thus
are suitable for photovoltaic absorber layer applications.
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Conflicts of interest
There are no conicts of interest to declare.
Acknowledgements
A. Al-A. thankful to Ministry of Higher Education in Saudi
Arabia for funding and the University of Islamic, Saudi Arabia
for permission to study in the United Kingdom. DJL and FA are
funded by EPSRC grant EP/R020590/1.
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