Influence of Walnut Shell Dopant on the Properties of Walnut Doped-PbS Thin Film Crystals Grown by Sol-gel Technique

Achilefu Blessing Chinyere¹ , Okpala Uchechukwu Vincent² , Nwori Augustine Nwode³

Section:Research Paper, Product Type: Journal-Paper
Vol.12 , Issue.2 , pp.10-17, Apr-2024

Online published on Apr 30, 2024

Copyright © Achilefu Blessing Chinyere, Okpala Uchechukwu Vincent, Nwori Augustine Nwode . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
 

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Abstract :
Thin film crystals of walnut doped-lead sulfide (walnut/PbS) have been successfully grown using the Sol-gel method and characterized for device applications in this report. Lead nitrate (Pb(NO3)2), thiourea, sodium silicate, tartaric acid [HOOC(CHOH)2COOH] and locally prepared grinded walnut back cover/shell were the precursors used for the synthesis of the crystal films. The structural and optical properties of the films were investigated via x-ray diffraction (XRD) and spectrophotometry techniques respectively while the FT-IR technique was used to determine the functional group compositions of the films. The results of the characterisations indicated that the optical properties of the films like the absorbance, reflectance and refractive are quite high and are influenced by walnut doping. The bandgap energy of the films is in the range of 1.51 eV to 1.92 eV., which is strategic for many electronic and optoelectronic device applications. The XRD analysis showed that the grown crystals are crystalline in nature and crystal parameters such as grain size are11.87 nm, 13.08 nm, 14.75 nm and 36.77 nm for un-doped, 1 drop, 2 drops, 3 drops walnut-doped PbS films respectively. The dislocation density of the films decreased as the number of walnut dopants drops increased which suggest improvement in the structure of the films. The FT-IR results indicated that the grown crystals composed mostly the N-H, O-H (alcohol stretching) and C-H (alkane stretching bond) functional groups. These properties exhibited by the grown films position them for many opto-electronics applications including infrared detectors, solar cells, photodetectors devices, waveguide and optical fiber device applications.

Key-Words / Index Term :
Lead-sulfide, Bandgap, Walnut, Detectors, Solar Cells, Sol-gel, Doping.

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