α-Axis oriented ZnS thin film synthesised by dip coating method

The structural, morphological, optical and electrical properties of α-axis oriented nanostructured ZnS thin film prepared by dip coating have been studied in this article. The X-ray diffraction studies of the film shows that the ZnS was crystallized with cubic structure of particle size 27 nm with a strong orientation along (200) plane which is advantageous for optoelectronic devices. The scanning electron microscopy and TEM micrograph reveals that the film consists of nano crystalline columnar particles. From the investigation of the absorption spectra of this ZnS film, the band-gap is found to be higher (4 eV) than bulk (3.7 eV) indicating a blue shift. It is found that the film is having a transparency of >90 % in the visible-near IR region from 400 to 800 nm. From the photoconductivity measurements, it is evident that the film is photosensitive in nature. From the electrical resistivity measurements the conductivity of the film was found to be 3.4 × 10−2 Ω−1 cm−1. Hot probe method indicates that the synthesized ZnS film is n-type.