Enhanced performance of Pb/FeSe2 interfaces designed for electrical applications.

In this work, iron selenide layers are deposited onto glass and lead substrates to perform as terahertz filters. The layers are deposited by the thermal evaporation technique under a vacuum pressure of 10–5 mbar. Glass/FeSe2 (GFS) and Pb/FeSe2 (PFS) films are structurally, morphologically and electrically characterized. The atomic composition of the GFS films contained excess selenium that reacted with Pb forming a PbSe layer. This layer induced the crystallinity of iron selenide. The preferred crystal structure of FeSe2 was cubic with cell parameters of a = b = c = 3.04 Å and space group P m 3 m . Lead substrates increased the room temperature electrical conductivity of GFS films from of 1.52 × 10 - 5 (Ω cm) - 1 to 6.88 × 10 - 2 (Ω cm) - 1 . Analyses of the electrical conduction mechanism in the temperature range of 25–330 K have shown that coating the films onto Pb substrates shifted the accepter level from 182 to 58 meV, decreased the degree of structural disorder, shorten the average hopping range from 59 to 19 Å and increased the density of localized states near Fermi level by two orders of magnitude. The conductivity of PFS films exhibited degenerate semiconductor characteristics in the temperature range of 120–28 K. This feature is followed by an evidence of exhibiting superconductivity at critical temperatures lower than 24 K. On the other hand the impedance spectroscopy measurements in the driving signal frequency domain of 0.01–1.0 GHz have shown that Pb/FeSe2/Ag interfaces can perform as band filters showing microwave cutoff frequency values reaching 100 GHz at driving signal frequency of 1.0 GHz. These band filters are ideal for 6G technology nominating PFS films for high frequency applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]