Structural and Opto-Electrical Properties of Cuprous Oxide Thin Film Prepared by Thermal Oxidation Technique

Aim: The structural, morphological and opto-electrical characteristics of cuprous oxide produced by thermal oxidation are investigated in this study.

Methodology: Thermal oxidation of copper foils was used to develop high-quality cuprous oxide crystals, and the process proved to be effective in producing cuprous oxide films with high purity and big grain size.

Results: X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis revealed the film’s cubic structure. Large peaks in the XRD patterns indicate that the produced films were made up of a single Cu2O phase with no interstitial phase and a nano-grain structure with a preferred (111) orientation at 2θ angle of 36.510. The mean crystallite size calculated using the Debye Scherrer model was found to be 26nm. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) revealed that the material is rough on a microscale, and the average grain size for the crystal was estimated to be 0.68µm. There were reflections of crystal defects such as vacancies and dislocation due to the process of annealing. The room temperature optical absorption coefficient was analysed using transmission spectra data where the optical band gap energy was found to be 2.11eV.

Conclusion: The findings are important in applications in semi-conductor devices such as solar cells, optical sources and detectors.