PLD growth of thin film Zinc Phosphide

The development of efficient, low cost solar cells to meet society's growing energy needs has triggered tremendous interest in developing photovoltaics formed from earth abundant materials. Zinc phosphide (Zn3P2) is a promising earth abundant absorber layer for photovoltaic energy conversion with a nearly ideal band gap (1.5eV) and a large absorption coefficient of 10$^{4}$/cm. In this work we examine the growth parameters, electrical and optical properties of thin film zinc phosphide produced using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) from a zinc phosphide target at laser fluencies ranging from 1-3 J/cm2. For the laser fluences explored, highly resistive amorphous zinc phosphide thin films were produced with a band gap of approximately 1.7 eV. The thin films could be transformed from amorphous to polycrystalline zinc phosphide by annealing at 400C for 15mins in a N2 atmosphere. High resolution X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) is used to examine the binding energies of Zn 2p3/2 and Phosphorous 2p3/2 signals and are in the range of 1021.6 eV and 127.5 eV. Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDAX) revealed that the Zn3P2 thin films are nearly stoichiometric in composition. Hall mobility in these materials and Zn3P2/ZnS hetrojunction solar cell performance will be discussed.