Annealing effect on characterization of nano crystalline SnSe thin films prepared by thermal evaporation

Tin Selenide (SnSe) Nano crystalline thin films of thickness 400±20 nm were deposited on glass substrate by thermal evaporation technique at R.T under a vacuum of ∼ 2 × 10− 5 mbar to study the effect of annealing temperatures (as-deposited, 100, 150 and 200) °C on its structural, surface morphology and optical properties. The films structure was characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD) which showed that all the films have polycrystalline in nature and orthorhombic structure, with the preferred orientation along the (111) plane. These films was synthesized of very fine crystallites size of (14.8-24.5) nm, the effect of annealing temperatures on the cell parameters, crystallite size and dislocation density were observed. Surface morphology of SnSe films as-prepared and annealed are investigated using atomic force microscopy (AFM) analysis, the grain size of these films vary in the rang from (60.12 to 94.70)nm with increasing annealing temperatures. The results obtained from XRD and AFM indicated that these films were Nano crystalline. The optical constants like absorption coefficient, loss factor, quality factor and optical conductivity of these films has been evaluated. The optical properties revealed that SnSe films have optical energy band gap values increase from (1.5-2.2) eV upon annealing temperatures and high value of absorption coefficient hich implies choosing them in solar cell application.