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In present paper, a promising intermediate band (IB) material of CuGaS 2 thin films incorporating with titanium (Ti) have been successfully fabricated by a facile non-vacuum method. Binary sulfides used as raw material are firstly tried to fabricate Ti-substituted CuGaS 2 thin films via ball milling and spin-coating technique. The experimental measurements showed that the obtained Cu 2 Ga 1− x Ti x S 2 thin films are composed of chalcopyrite structure with well crystallinity. A slightly left shift of (1 1 2) diffraction peaks indicated the successful doping of Ti element. The Hall Effect measurement exhibited the carrier concentration raised obviously from 1.538 × 10 12 ( x = 0) to 1.134 × 10 13 cm −3 ( x = 0.06) with increasing of Ti doping concentration. More important, the UV–vis–NIR spectra exhibited a strong optical absorption in Ti-substituted CuGaS 2 films, which indicated the IBs were roughly formed in the films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel intermediate band (IB) material of Zn incorporation in Ti-doped CuGaS 2 thin films has been successfully fabricated via a facile non vacuum method including ball milling, spin-coating and annealing. Experimental results have shown that the IB position of Ti-doped CuGaS 2 thin films can be adjusted by Zn incorporation. In this study, the optical band gap has a shortening of 0.19 eV when 0.6% Zn is added to the 1.5% Ti-doped CuGaS 2 . Due to the Zn addition, the grains grow larger, which is observable from the surface morphology of the thin films using scanning electron microscope (SEM). The energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDAX) spectrum demonstrates that ball milling can effectively make Ti and Zn elements co-coped evenly into CuGaS 2 thin films. Moreover, the improved optical property of the Ti-doped CuGaS 2 thin films due to the Zn incorporation also sheds lights in developing new material that could be a potential light absorption layers candidate of high efficiency solar cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]