Fabrication of ternary Cu-Sb-Te thin films by electrochemical co-deposition strategy at one-stage process

Here, we reported the use of electrochemical underpotential deposition (UPD)-based co-deposition method for the synthesis of ternary Cu-Sb-Te thin film, for the first time. The UPD potentials of each metal were enlightened with cyclic voltammetry and then production of thin film was carried out via electrolysis at a constant potential. To reveal the characterization of thin film, several methods were examined based on electrochemical, spectrochemical, electrical and surface imaging. SEM studies proved that the fabricated film had smooth granular crystallites with average size of 80 nm and 24 nm thickness at 30 min deposition time. The atomic composition ratio was obtained as 1:5:3 from the XPS survey. XRD data of the thin film displayed a homogeneous Cu-Sb-Te compound with a single phase. The photoresponse of the fabricated films had nonlinear behavior, referring to the opportunity of applying this thin film in photovoltaic and/or as up-and-coming material in nonlinear devices. Moreover, the proposed method offered an economical and facile way for the fabrication of two-dimensional (2-D) epitaxial ternary thin films with desirable features at one-stage process. Graphical abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.].