Highly transparent and conductive p-type CuI films by optimized solid-iodination at room temperature

Shulin Luo; Jing Xu; Jianhong Gong; Ruisong You; Yong Wang; Song-Sheng Lin; Ming-Jiang Dai; Hui Sun

doi:10.1088/1361-6528/ac2d0a

Highly transparent and conductive p-type CuI films by optimized solid-iodination at room temperature

Nanotechnology. 2021 Dec 15;33(10). doi: 10.1088/1361-6528/ac2d0a.

Authors

Shulin Luo^{1

2}, Jing Xu³, Jianhong Gong², Ruisong You¹, Yong Wang¹, Song-Sheng Lin⁴, Ming-Jiang Dai⁴, Hui Sun¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Space Science and Physics, Shandong University, Weihai 264209, People's Republic of China.
² School of Mechanical, Electrical and Information Engineering, Shandong University, Weihai 264200, People's Republic of China.
³ School of Mechanical Engineering, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou 310018, People's Republic of China.
⁴ Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Modern Surface Engineering Technology, Institute of New Materials, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510651, People's Republic of China.

PMID: 34610593
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6528/ac2d0a

Abstract

p-type CuI films with optimized optoelectronic performance were synthesized by solid-phase iodination of Cu₃N precursor films at room temperature. The effects of the deposition power of Cu₃N precursors on the structural, electrical, and optical properties of the CuI films were systematically investigated. X-ray diffraction results show that all the CuI films possess a zinc-blende structure. When the deposition power of Cu₃N precursors was 140 W, the CuI films present a high transmittance above 84% in the visible region, due to their smaller root-mean-square roughness values of 9.23 nm. Moreover, these films also have a low resistivity of 1.63 × 10^-2Ω·cm and a boosted figure of merit of 140.7 MΩ^-1. These results are significant achievements among various p-types TCOs, confirming the promising prospects of CuI as a p-type transparent semiconductor applied in transparent electronics.

Keywords: RF magnetron sputtering; p-type CuI film; solid-phase iodination; transparent conductive materials.